Steve Goddard's History Wire

FOCUS: American History -- Brando's Smile / The Rag Race / The First Lady of Radio

Brando's Smile -- His Life, Thought, and Work by Susan L. Mizruchi, Norton '14, $27.95, 469 pages, ASIN #0393082865. Index, notes, appendix, b&w images sprinkled through text. 

 

"Marlon Brando loved watching people, a habit that supported a genius for impersonation and characterization," writes author Susan Mizruchi in her latest work. "Though it came naturally, he pursued it with an almost scientific zeal. 'The face is an extraordinary subtle instrument,' he noted. 'I believe it has 155 muscles in it. The interaction of those muscles can hide a great deal, and people are always concealing emotions.

"Some people have very non-expressive faces....In such cases I try to read their body posture, the increase in the blink rate of their eyes, their aimless yawning or a failure to complete a yawn -- anything that denotes emotions they don't want to display. Brando made a lifelong study of emotions and the differences of personality and culture that inhibited their expression, which he managed to exploit in a remarkable variety of film roles."

Author Susan Mizruchi, a professor of English at Boston University, specializes in American literature, cultural history, and film. She lives in Boston.

The Rag Race -- How Jews Sewed Their Way to Success in America and the British Empire by Adam D. Mendelsohn, New York UPress '14, 396 pages, ASIN #1479847186. Index, notes, b&w images sprinkled through text.

From the dust cover:

"The majority of Jewish immigrants who made their way to the United States during 1820 and 1924 arrived nearly penniless, yet today their descendants stand out as exceptionally successful. Other ethnic groups have prospered in the United States, but none quite like the Jews. How have they risen so far and so fast? Have Jews prospered because of cultural features distinct to them as a group, or because of the particular circumstances that they encountered in America? And can their recipe for success be distilled and reproduced by the nation's newest immigrants?

"The Rag Race argues that the Jews who flocked to the United States during the age of mass migration were aided appreciably by their association with a particular corner of the American economy: the rag trade. From humble beginnings, Jews rode the coattails of the clothing trade from the margins of economic life to a position of unusual promise and prominence, shaping both their societal status and the clothing industry as a whole. In few other areas of the modern economy did Jews play such a central role."

Author Adam D. Mendelsohn is Director of the Pearlstine/Lipov Center for Southern Jewish Culture and Associate Professor of Jewish Studies at the College of Charleston.

The First Lady of Radio -- Eleanor Roosevelt's Historic Broadcasts, Edited by Stephen Drury Smith, with a foreword by Blanche Wiesen Cook, The New Press '14, stated First Printing. $25.95, 249 pages, ASIN #1620970422. Notes, unillustrated.

"No matter how limited your time or talents, you can give what you have to give to your country by knowing your own community and advocating such laws as will help to make democracy worthwhile for every individual. The diligent living of your citizenship, from day to day, may mean success for democracy in the world of the future, or absolute failure for our ideals."

             Eleanor Roosevelt -- June 20, 1940 radio broadcast

"Sunday at the White House began much like any other," writes Editor Stephen Drury Smith in his latest work. "First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt described it as a 'quiet' morning, although the staff was preparing for a luncheon of 30 guests, including close friends, visiting relatives, and government officials. President Franklin D. Roosevelt would take lunch privately in his study with his most trusted adviser, Harry Hopkins.

"Tensions had been steadily mounting between the United States and the increasingly belligerent Japanese. The President had been up late the night before, drafting a message to the Japanese emperor, so on Sunday, FDR was enjoying a few moments of private relaxation with Hopkins, his Scotty dog, Fala, and his stamp collection. ER was 'disappointed but not surprised' that her husband passed on the big luncheon crowd.

"It was December 7, 1941."

About the Editors:

Stephen Drury Smith is the executive editor and host of American Radio Works (ARW), the national documentary series from American Public Media. He lives in St. Paul, MN, and Boston, MA. Blanche Wiesen Cook is professor of history at John Jay College at the City University of New York. She lives in New York.

FOCUS: American History -- When the Facts Change / Red River Reminiscences / New Worlds for All

When the Facts Change -- Essays 1995-2010 by Tony Judt, Edited and Introduced by Jennifer Homans, Penguin Press '15, $29.95, 386 pages, ASIN #1594206007. Index, chronological list, notes follow each essay, unillustrated.

"The only way for me to write this introduction is to separate the man from the ideas," writes historian Jennifer Homans. 'Otherwise, I get pulled back into the man, who I loved and was married to from 1993 until his death in 2010, rather than forward into the ideas.' As you read these essays, I hope that you, too, will focus on the ideas, because they are good ideas, and they were written in good faith.

"'In good faith' may have been Tony's favorite phrase and highest standard, and he held himself to it in everything he wrote. What he meant by it, I think, was writing that is free of calculation and maneuver, intellectual or otherwise. A clean, clear, honest account.

"This is a book about our age. The arc is down: from the heights of hope and possibilitiy, with the revolutions of 1989, into the confusion, devastation, and loss of 9/11, the Iraq war, the deepening crisis in the Middle East, and -- as Tony saw it -- the self-defeating decline of the American republic.

"As the facts changed and events unfolded, Tony found himself turned increasingly and unhappily against the current, fighting with all of his intellectual might to turn the ship of ideas, however, slightly, in a different direction. The story ends abruptly, with his untimely death."

Tony Judt, who taught at Cambridge, Oxford, and Berkeley, was the Erich Maria Remarque Professor of European Studies at New York University and the director of the Remarque Institut, which he founded in 1995. He has written numerous books and contributed to leading newspapers and magazines. Editor Jennifer Homans was a professional dancer before becoming a writer and scholar. She holds a Ph.D. in modern European history from New York University.

Captain W.W. Withenbury's 1838--1842 Red River Reminiscences, Edited and annotated by Jacques D. Bagur, UNorth Texas Press '14, $32.95, 352 pages, ASIN #1574415476. Index, appendix, notes, b&w images sprinkled through text.

From the dust jacket:

"W.W. Withenbury was a famous river boat captain during the mid-1800s. In retirement, he wrote a series of letters for the Cincinnati Commercial, under the title 'Red River Reminiscences.' Jacques Bagur has selected and annotated 39 letters describing three steamboat voyages on the upper Red River from 1838 to 1842, when Texas was a republic and Oklahoma was the Indian Territory.

"Withenbury was a master of character and incident, and his profiles of persons, including three signers of the Texas Declaration of Independence, reflect years of acquaintance. Bagur has provided an introduction to the historical setting, ten maps that enable the reader to follow the movements of the boats, and extensive annotations that enhance the value of the text and demonstrate that Withenbury was writing about real people in real places. The beauty of Withenbury's writing ranks this among the best of the reminiscences that were written as the steamboat era was declining."

Editor Jacques D. Bagur holds a degree from LSU and has spent more than 30 years in applied research specializing in the geography of Louisiana and East Texas.

New Worlds for All -- Indians, Europeans, and the Remaking of Early America -- Second Edition by Colin G. Calloway, Johns Hopkins UPress '13 paperback. $24.95, 241 pages, ASIN #1421410311. Index, bibliographical essay, b&w images (some full-page) sprinkled through text.

From the back cover:

"Although many Americans consider the establishment of the colonies as the birth of this country, in fact early America existed long before the arrival of the Europeans. From coast to coast, Native Americans had created enduring cultures,  and the subsequent European invasion remade much of the land and society.

"In New Worlds for All, Colin G. Calloway explores the unique and vibrant new cultures that Indians and Europeans forged together in early America. The journey toward this hybrid society kept Europeans' and Indians' lives tightly entwined: living, working, worshiping, traveling, and trading together -- as well as fearing, avoiding, despising, and killing one another. In some areas, settlers lived in Indian towns, eating Indian food. In the Mohawk Valley of New York, Europeans tattooed their faces; Indians drank tea. A unique American identity emerged.

" The second edition of New Worlds for All incorporates 15 years of additional scholarship on Indian-European relations, such as the role of gender, Indian slavery, relationships with African Americans, and new understandings of frontier society."

Author Colin G. Calloway is the John Kimball, Jr. 1943 Professor of History and Professor of Native American Studies at Dartmouth College. He has written numerous previous books.

FOCUS: A Little of This, A Little of That -- Reform Acts / The Battle of New Orleans / The Devil is Here in These Hills

Reform Acts -- Chartism, Social Agency, and the Victorian Novel 1832--1867 by Chris R. Vanden Bossche, Johns Hopkins UPress '14, $49.95, 254 pages, ASIN #142141208X. Index, works cited, notes, unillustrated.

"The title of this study refers to the Reform Acts of 1832 and 1867, which expanded the electoral franchise and altered the system of parliamentary representation in Great Britain," writes Notre Dame English Prof. Chris R. Vanden Bossche. "The First Reform Act raised the number of eligible voters in England and Wales from 366,000 to 653,000, an increase from 11 per cent to 18 per cent of the adult male population (figures for Scotland and Ireland were similar).

"This modest increase meant that, even after passage of the Act, four out of five adult males -- and, of course, all women -- did not have the right to vote. The intention of the Act, as understood by contemporary politicians, was to enfranchise the newly risen middle class. It did so by altering property qualifications for the franchise and redistributing parliamentary seats to provide better representation of the industrial midlands.

"Working-class radicals supported the Act as a precursor to further change, but they discovered after its passage that a Parliament still very much dominated by the upper classes had no intention of expanding the franchise any further and, moreover, that the reformed Parliament was no more inclined to legislate on behalf of the working classes than the Old Parliament had been."

Author Chris R. Vanden Bossche is author of Carlyle and the Search for Authority, editor of Thomas Carlyle: Historical Essays, and co-editor of Thomas Carlyle: Past and Present.

The Battle of New Orleans -- A Bicentennial Tribute, edited by Gary D. Joiner, foreword by The Hon. W. Henson Moore, Pelican Publishing Press '15, 280 pages, ASIN #1455620890. No index, bibliography or notes, unillustrated.

From the dust cover:

"The War of 1812 was a turning point in American history. It proved to America and to the world that the fledgling nation was a military and naval power with which to be reckoned. Although it occurred several weeks after the signing of the Treaty of Ghent, the Battle of New Orleans was a defining moment in the war. Combatants represented a plethora of races and nations, fighting to defend their country against the overwhelming might of the British Empire.

"The Bicentennial Commission has herein compiled major works on the Battle of New Orleans originally published by the Louisiana Landmarks Society. An examination of British Maj. Gen. Sir Edward M. Pekenham is included, along with an exploration of the pivotal role of sea power. From the activities on the west bank of the Mississippi River near New Orleans to the plantation houses caught up in the conflict, no aspect of the battle is ignored."

Editor Gary D. Joiner is a professor and chair of the Department of History and Social Sciences at Louisiana State University Shreveport. He is a former title curator and cartographer. Joiner lives in Shreveport, LA. The Hon. W. Henson Moore is chair of the Battle of New Orleans Bicentennial Commission.

The Devil is Here in These Hills -- West  Virginia's Coal Miners and Their Battle for Freedom by James Green, Atlantic Monthly Press '15, $28, 440 pages, ASIN #0802123317. Index, notes, illustration credits, b&w images sprinkled through text.

 

"One autumn morning in 2911, a middle-aged man with wavy hair and horn-rimmed glasses waited in Baltimore's smoky Camden Station for a B&O limited that would take him to Huntington, West Virginia," writes author James Green in his latest of five books. "He looked like an artist or college professor. In fact, James M. Cain had dreamed of being a professional singer like his mother, an operatic soprano, but writing came more easily to him.

"After editing an army newspaper during the war in France and teaching at a prep school, Cain took a job with the Baltimore Sun, covering police court and filing crime stories. But when he boarded the B&O's westbound limited that fall morning, Cain left the city on a different kind of assignment. He was headed over the Allegheny range, bound for the coal country of southern West Virginia.

"His mission: to search out the truth about what had caused a massive insurrection of armed coal miners the previous summer. In late August, 1921, nearly 10,000 workers had marched over fifty miles of rugged terrain to liberate fellow union members who had been jailed under a martial law decree imposed on Mingo County, where a vicious mine war had raged for more than two years."

Author James Green has written five books, including the critically acclaimed Death in the Haymarket: A Story of Chicago, the First Labor Movement, and The Bombing that Divided Gilded Age America. He lives in Somerville, MA.

FOCUS: A Potpourri -- Losing Touch With Nature / Fanny Seward / Asia's Cauldron

Losing Touch With Nature -- Literature & The New Science in 16th Century England by Mary Thomas Crane, Johns Hopkins UPress '14, $49.95, 227 pages, ASIN #1421415313. Index, notes, unillustrated.

 

 "During the scientific revolution, the dominant Aristotelian picture of nature, which cohered closely with common sense and ordinary perceptual experience, was completely overthrown," writes scholar Mary Thomas Crane in her latest work. "Although we now take for granted the ideas that the earth revolves around the sun and that seemingly solid matter is composed of tiny particles, these concepts seem equally counterintuitive, anxiety provoking, and at odds with our ancestors's embodied experience of the world.

"In Losing Touch with Nature, (the author).... examines the complex way that the new science's threat to intuitive notions of the natural world was treated and reflected in the work of Edmund Spenser, Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare, and other early modern writers.

"The earliest stages of the scientific revolution in England were most powerfully experienced as a divergence of intuitive science from official science, causing a schism between embodied human experience of the world and learned explanations of how the world works. This.....book traces the growing awareness of that epistemological gap through textbooks and natural philosophy treatises to canonical poetry and plays, presciently registering and exploring the magnitude of the human loss that accompanied the beginnings of modern science."

Author Mary Thomas Crane is the Thomas F. Rattigan Professor of English at Boston College. She has written two previous books. 

Fanny Seward -- A Life by Trudy Krisher, Syracuse UPress '15, $29.95, 304 pages, ASIN #0815610416. Index, bibliography, notes, b&w images sprinkled through text.

From the dust cover:

"On April 14,1986, the night of President Lincoln's assassination, Booth's conspirator Lewis Powell attempted to assassinate Secretary of State William Seward in his home just blocks from Ford's Theatre. The attack, which left Seward and his son seriously wounded, is recounted in poignant detail in Fanny Seward's diary. Fanny, the beloved only daughter of Seward, was a keen observer, and her diary entries from 1858 to 1866 are the foundation of Krisher's vivid portrait of the young girl who was an eyewitness to one of the most tumultuous periods in American history.

"Fanny offers intimate observations on the politicians, generals, and artists of the time. She tells of attending dinner parties, visiting troops and going to the theater, often alongside President Abraham Lincoln and his wife Mary. Through Fanny's writings, Krisher not only skillfully brings to life the events and activities of a progressive political family but also illuminated the day-to-day drama of the war. Giving readers a previously unseen glimpse into the era, Fanny Seward: A Life broadens our understanding of Civil War America.

Author Trudy Krisher is a retired professor in the Department of Liberal Arts, Communication, and Social Sciences at Sinclair Community College in Dayton, OH.

Asia's Cauldron -- The South China Sea and the End of a Stable Pacific by Robert D. Kaplan, Random House '15 paperback. $17, 225 pages, ASIN #0812984803. Index, notes, unillustrated.

From the back cover:

"Over the last decade, the center of world power has been quietly shifting from Europe to Asia. With possible oil reserves of several billion barrels, by some estimates 900 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, and several centuries' worth of competing territorial claims, the South China Sea in particular is a simmering pot of potential conflict.

"In this intensely readable book, one of the world's most perceptive foreign policy experts explores the conflicts brewing in the region and their implications for global peace and stability. To understand the future of conflict in East Asia, Robert D. Kaplan argues, one must understand the goals and motivations of its leaders and its people.

"Part travelogue, part geopolitical primer, Asia's Cauldron takes us on a journey through the region's boom cities and ramshackle slums -- from Vietnam to Malaysia, Singapore to the Philippines. At a time when every day's news seems to contain a story -- large or small -- that directly relates to conflicts over the South China sea, Asia's Cauldron is an indispensible guide to a corner of the globe that will affect all our lives for decades to come."

Author Robert D. Kaplan has written 15 books on foreign affairs and travel, translated into many languages. He is a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security and a contributing editor at The Atlantic.

FOCUS: American History -- Gateway to Freedom / A Superpower Transformed / African Canadians in Union Blue

Gateway to Freedom -- The Hidden History of the Underground Railroad by Eric Foner, Norton '15, $26.95, 301 pages, ASIN #0393244075. Index, notes, three groupings of b&w glossy images.

"The 19th century's most celebrated black American first tasted freedom on September 4, 1838, when he arrived in New York City as a 19-year-old fugitive slave," writes prize-winning historian Eric Foner in his latest work. "Frederick Bailey had long hoped to escape from bondage. As a youth in Maryland he gazed out at the ships on Chesapeake Bay, seeing them as 'freedom's swift-winged angels.'

"He secretly taught himself to read and write, understanding, he later wrote, that knowledge was 'the pathway from slavery to freedom.' In 1836, he and four friends devised a plan to abscond by canoe into the bay and somehow make their way north. But the plan was discovered, and before their departure the five were arrested, jailed, and returned to their owners.

"Two years later, while working as a caulker in a Baltimore shipyard, Bailey again plotted his escape, this time with the assistance of Anna Murray, a free black woman he planned to marry. She provided the money for a rail ticket, and Bailey borrowed papers from a retired black sailor identifying him as a free man."Dressed in nautical attire, he boarded a train, hoping to reach New York City. Maryland law required black passengers on the Philadelphia, Wilmington, and Baltimore lines (which opened only a year before Bailey's escape) to apply for tickets before eight o'clock in the morning on the day of travel so that their free papers could be examined and, if necessary, investigated. But the measure remained largely unenforced. Bailey used a printed timetable to arrive at the station at the moment of the train's departure and purchased his ticket on board to avoid scrutiny."

Prolific historian Eric Foner has been awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the Bancroft Prize, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the Lincoln Prize for his distinguished works on the Civil War period. He is a Professor of History at Columbia University.

A Superpower Transformed -- The Remaking of American Foreign Relations in the 1970s by Daniel J. Sargent, Oxford UP '15, $34.95, 456 pages, ASIN #0195395476. Index, sources, notes, b&w images sprinkled through text.

Author Daniel J. Sargent identifies three superpowers in his times: Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and the United States. "A superpower is different, he explains. "Unlike most other international actors, it operates on the world scale and even presumes responsibility for the international system as a whole. For William Fox, the political scientist who in 1944 distinguished the 'super powers' from the rest, what made a superpower were military and geopolitical resources: armed forces and the far-flung bases from which they operate.'

"Yet power....(he says), is relational; it involves the capacity to shape outcomes, to compel others to do what they would not do otherwise. Arms furnish power; but affluence coerces, ideas persuade, and culture entices. The resources on which power depends are myriad, and they are specific to context. As resources ebb and flow and the diverse contexts in which power is wielded evolve, superpowers rise and fall."

Author Daniel J. Sargent is assistant professor of history at the University of California, Berkeley. He has written one previous book.

African Canadians in Union Blue -- Volunteering for the Cause in the Civil War by Richard M. Reid, Kent State UPress '15 paperback. $28.95, 308 pages, ASIN #1606352555. Index, selected bibliography, notes, appendix, b&w images sprinkled through text.

From the back cover:

"When Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, he also authorized the U.S. army to recruit black soldiers for the war effort. Nearly 200,000 men answered the call, and several thousand of them came from Canada. What compelled these men to leave the relative comfort and safety of home to fight in a foreign war?

"In African Canadians in Union Blue, Richard Reid sets out in search of an answer and discovers a group of men whose courage and contributions open a window on the changing understanding of the American Civil War and the ties that held black communities together even as the borders around them shifted and were torn asunder."

Author Richard M. Reid is professor emeritus at the University of Guelph and the author of several books on Canadian and American history.

 

FOCUS: American History -- Wilde in America / Home Fires / Harlem's Rattlers and the Great War

Wilde in America -- Oscar Wilde and the Invention of Modern Celebrity by David M. Friedman, Norton '14, $26.95, 316 pages, ASIN #0393063178. Index, notes, grouping of b&w glossy images.

"On January 3, 1882, a federal customs agent, standing near the Hudson River dock where a British ocean liner had just moored, told an arriving passenger from that ship to present his luggage for inspection," writes author David M. Friedman in this hilarious and enlightening study of the birth of American celebrity.

"'Have you anything to declare?' the agent asked, trying not to gawk at the traveler's lavender pants, his puffy white shirt, his green wool coat trimmed at the collar and ruffs in seal fur, and what appeared to be a small turban atop a head of brown hair that fell to the man's shoulders.

    "'Nothing,' Oscar Wilde answered.

    "Then a pause.

    "'Nothing but my genius.'

"That this story is still told, more than 100 years later, is evidence of Wilde's enduring reputation as the most sardonic wit in the history of the English language. What makes the famous quip all the more comical is how little there was to justify it. For the man reputed to have said these words -- and their debate whether he actually did -- was (in either case) not the legendary Irish dramatist, novelist, poet, and essayist we recognize today. Not yet anyway.

"It would be years before he would write The Importance of Being Earnest, An Ideal Husband, The Picture of Dorian Gray, De Profundis, The Ballad of Reading Gaol, Intentions, or any of the works for which we now honor and remember him. Yet in the 10 months that followed his passage through customs, Wilde -- without writing anything much longer than a letter -- did demonstrate a special genius, a genius that made his literary career possible, maybe even inevitable. And Wilde didn't merely fashion his image as a world-class wit after walking onto American soil in 1882. He created an enduring part of the world we live in today.

Author David M. Friedman is the author of A Mind of Its Own: A Cultural History of the Penis and The Immortalists: Charles Lindbergh, Dr. Alexis Carrel, and Their Daring Quest to Live Forever.

Home Fires -- How Americans Kept Warm in the 19th Century by Sean Patrick Adams, Johns Hopkins UPress '14 paperback. 183 pages, ASIN #1421413574. Index, further selected reading, notes, b&w images sprinkled through text.

Author Sean Patrick Adams lays the foundation for this study of how early colonists managed to keep warm through arctic winters in his Prologue:

"We hear of Persons frozen to Death on both Rivers contending with the Ice and of multitudes who suffer in various Parts of the Town," New Yorker William Smith wrote in 1780. 'No Wood can come from the other side of the Water and 'tis said this Island will be totally disforested in a Week.' As Smith and other residents of the occupied cities of the North hunkered down for long, cold, and trying winters during the American Revolution, they faced a crisis of growing proportions.

"The increasing scarcity of firewood in American cities had been evident during the colonial period, but the political and military developments exacerbated its impact. During the winter of 1775-1776 Bostonians resorted to tearing apart John Winthrop's old house for firewood. When no wood was to be had, they burned horse dung to keep warm.

"The British army, which controlled the city, offered little assistance; one resident recalled that while the cold afflicted many Bostonians, 'such was the inhumanity of our masters that (we) were even denied the privilege of buying the surplusage of the soldiers' rations.' When the hard winter of 1779-80 hit, it was the coldest season in recorded history for the American colonies.

"Philadelphians roasted an ox on the ice over Delaware, and the British army crossed the frozen waterways of the Northeast without concern. No group felt the combined effects of fuel shortages and severe weather more keenly than the laboring classes and dependent poor, for whom the fuel shortages pinched already scarce household budgets and threatened to lead to sickness and death. 'God have mercy on the Poor,' William Smith continued in his 1780 diary. 'Many reputable people lay abed these Days for Want of Fuel.'"

Author Sean Patrick Adams is an associate professor of history at the University of Florida and author of Old Dominion, Industrial Commonwealth: Coal, Politics, and Economy in Antebellum America, published by Johns Hopkins.

Harlem's Rattlers and the Great War -- The Undaunted 369's Regiment and the African American Quest for Equality by Jeffrey T. Sammons and John H. Morrow, Jr., UKansas Press '14, 616 pages, ASIN #0700619577. Index, bibliography, notes, appendix, grouping of b&w images.

 

From the dust jacket:

"When on May 15, 1918, a French lieutenant warned Henry Johnson of the 369th to move back because of a possible enemy raid, Johnson reportedly replied, 'I'm an American, and I never retreat.' The story, even if apocryphal, captures the mythic status of the Harlem Rattlers, the African American combat unit that grew out of the 15th New York National Guard, who were said to have never lost a man to capture or a foot of ground that had been taken.

"It also, in its insistence on American identity, points to a truth at the heart of this book -- more than fighting to make the world safe for democracy, the black men of the 369th fought to convince America to live up to its democratic promise. It is this aspect of the storied regiment's history -- its place within the larger movement of African Americans for full citizenship in the face of virulent racism -- that Harlem's Rattlers and the Great War brings to the fore."

About the authors: Jefferey T. Sammons is professor in the Department of History at New York University and the author of Beyond the Ring: The Role of Boxing in American Society. John H. Morrow, Jr., Franklin Professor of History at the University of Georgia, is the author of several books, including The Great War: An Imperial History.

 

FOCUS: British History -- A Year in the Life of Downton Abbey / Black Diamonds

 

A Year in the Life of Downton Abbey -- Seasonal Celebrations, Traditions, and Recipes by Jessica Fellowes, foreword by Julian Fellowes. St. Martin's Press '14 in oversized format on glossy stock, $29.99, 319 pages, ASIN #1250065380. Recipe Index, Further Reading, color glossy images (many of them full-page) images sprinkled through text.

From the dust jacket:

"It is 1924, and there have been many changes at Downton Abbey since the family and their servants first welcomed us there 12 years ago. A generation of men has been tragically lost at the front; children are once again breathing new life into the great house; a chauffer now sits at the Grantham dinner table; and skirt hems continue to rise.

"Still, in the midst of all this upheaval, many things at Downton remain largely unchanged. Nanny still holds sway in the nursery, and there are still summer fetes to be organized, menus to be planned, and farms to be run.

"This gorgeous book explores the seasonal events and celebrations of the great estate -- including house parties, debutantes, the London Season, yearly trips to Scotland, the sporting season, and, of course, the cherished rituals of Christmas. Jessica Fellowes and the creative team behind Downton Abbey invite us to peer through the prism of the house as we learn more about the lives of our favorite characters, the actors who play them, and those who bring this exquisite world to life.

"A Year in the Life of Downton Abbey is packed full of exclusive new photographs, with a delicious array of traditional British recipes adapted for modern kitchens: kedgeree, orange marmalade, asparagus tarts, cream of watercress soup, Irish stew, lemon barley water, meringues with red berries, parmesan straws, Christmas pudding with brandy butter, and more. From the moment when the servants light the fires against the chill of January, through the last family game of charades and the servants' Christmas ball, this magnificent book invites us to take part in 12 months in the life of Downton Abbey."

Author Jessica Fellowes, niece of series creator Julian Fellowes, is the New York Times and Globe and Mail author of The World of Downton Abbey. She writes for The Daily Telegraph, The Lady, The Times, and The Sunday Times's Style. Brought up in London, Jessica now lives in Oxfordshire and Notting Hill with her family.

 

Black Diamonds -- The Downfall of an Aristocratic Dynasty and the Fifty Years that Changed England by Catherine Bailey, Penguin '14 paperback. $17, 518 pages, ASIN #0141019239. Index, notes, two groupings of b&w glossy images.

In a brief Q&A, author Catherine Bailey discusses the writing of her new book:

Q. In The Secret Rooms, you explain what drew you to the story of the Rutland family, that you were researching a book on World War I and asked to see the Rutland archives and when there were obvious gaps in the records you decided to devote your attention on uncovering what the family was trying to hide. What brought you to write about Wentworth House and the Fitzwilliam family, and how did you discover that they also had secrets they were trying to keep buried?

A. I first saw Wentworth House in late 1990 when I was researching a documentary film in Yorkshire. The size of the house -- the largest in Europe - was breathtaking. Here, it seemed, was England's forgotten palace.. Unlike comparable houses, such as Chatsworth or Blenheim, it was closed to the public. Outside its locality, few knew of its existence. Seeing it for the first time, it looked empty and abandoned. The shutters were drawn; its 18th century facade was black with grime and in a poor state of repair. The image was haunting. I wanted to know what had happened there over the centuries, and what had led to its abandonment.

Q. Does some form of British aristocracy, like what we read in your books or see on "Downton Abbey" still exist in Britain? How has it changed?

A. Undoubtedly, there are still a large number of aristocratic families who live in historic houses that have been in their family's possession for centuries. Many life in great style, surrounded by beautiful works of art and pieces of furniture that have been in situ for many hundreds of years. But the great retinues of servants, as seen in Downton Abbey, have gone.

In the few cases where a family continues to employ the same number of staff as it did at the turn of the last century, there is a crucial difference. Then, the servants were employed to serve them; now, they are there to serve the public. With the exception of a very few, today's aristocrats depend on the public to preserve their historic homes; without the revenues generated by the vast numbers who visit them, they would be impossible to maintain.

Author Cathrine Bailey read history at Oxford University. She is an award-winning TV producer and director, making documentary films inspired by her interest in 20th century history. She lives in West London.

FOCUS: Holiday Gift Shop -- A Christmas Far From Home / Track-Two Diplomacy Toward An Israeli-Palestinian Solution, 1978-2014 / Literary Executions / Approaches to Greek Myth

NOTE TO OUR READERS: From now through the holidays, History Wire will be offering capsule descriptions of the latest newly-published books -- both fiction and non-fiction -- to make your gift choices easier. Happy Holidays to all!

A Christmas Far From Home -- An Epic Tale of Courage and Survival During the Korean War by Stanley Weintraub, DaCapo Press '14, $26.99, 286 pages, ASIN #0306822326. Index, sources, b&w images sprinkled through text.

The day after Thanksgiving, five months into the Korean War, General Douglas MacArthur flew to American positions in the north and grandly announced an end-the-war-by-Christmas offensive, despite recent evidence of intervention by Mao's Chinese troops.

Marching north in plunging temperatures, General Edward Almond's X Corps, which included a Division under the able leadership of General Oliver Smith, encountered little resistance. But thousands of Chinese, who had infiltrated across the frozen Yalu River, were lying in wait and would soon trap tens of thousands of US troops.

Author Stanley Weintraub is an award-winning author of numerous histories and biographies, including the bestselling books on wartime Christmas seasons, Pearl Harbor Christmas and Silent Night. He is a National Book Award finalist and Guggenheim Fellow and lives in Delaware.

Track-Two Diplomacy Toward an Israeli-Palestinian Solution 1978--2014 by Yair Hirschfeld, Wilson Center/Johns Hopkins UPress '14 paperback. 452 pages, ASIN #1421414147. Index, bibliography, notes, b&w images sprinkled through text.

Track-Two Diplomacy Toward An Israeli-Palestinian Solution, 1978-2014 is an important insider account of a crucial set of negotiations aimed at settling a seemingly endless conflict. It brings out many new details of negotiating sessions and internal policy and strategy debates, and it is especially insightful on the 13-year process that led to the September 1993 Oslo Accords.

That treaty, signed on the White House lawn in the presence of Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestinian Lieration Organization chairman Yasser Arafat, was a landmark occasion, to be followed shortly by the unraveling of the Israeli-Palestinian permanent occasion, to be followed shortly by the unraveling of the Israeli-Palestinian permanent status negotiations. Hirschfeld's historical narrative focuses on series of negotiations and ongoing efforts under particular Israeli governments. Each chapter concludes with a set of successes, failures, and lessons learned.

Author Yair Hirschfeld is a lecturer at the University of Haifa and director general of the Economic Cooperation Foundation in Israel.  

Literary Executions -- Capital Punishment and American Culture 1820--1925 by John Cyril Barton, Johns Hopkins UPress '14, stated First Printing, Illustrated, laminated cover. $49.95, 330 pages, ASIN #1421413329. Index, notes, b&w images sparsely sprinkled through text.

Drawing from legal and extralegal discourse but focusing on imaginative literature, Literary Executions examines representations of, responses to, and arguments for and against the death penalty in the United States over the long 19th century.

John Cyril Barton creates a generative dialogic between artistic relics and legal history. He looks to novels, short stories, poems, and creative nonfiction as well as legislative reports, trial transcripts, legal documents, newspaper and journal articles, treatises, and popular books (like The Record of Crimes, a Defence of Capital Punishment, and The Gallows, The Prison, and the Poor House), all of which were part of the debate over the death penalty.

Author John Cyril Barton is an associate professor and director of graduate studies in English at the University of Missouri -- Kansas City and co-editor of Transatlantic Sensations.

Approaches to Greek Myth, 2d Edition, Edited by Lowell Edmunds, Johns Hopkins UPress '14 paperback. $29.95, 470 pages, ASIN #1421414198. Index, contributors, bibliography and notes at end of each essay.

 Since the first edition of Approaches to Greek Myth was published in 1990, interest in Greek mythology has surged. There was no simple agreement on the subject of "myth" in classical antiquity, and there remains none today. Is myth a narrative or a performance? Can myth be separated from its context? What did myths mean to ancient Greeks and what do they mean today?

Here, Lowell Edmunds brings together practitioners of eight of the most important contemporary approaches to the subject. Whether exploring myth from a historical, comparative, or theoretical perspective, each contributor lucidly describes a particular approach, applies it to one or more myths, and reflects on what the approach yields that others do not. Edmunds's new general and chapter-level introductions recontextualize these essays and also touch on recent developments in scholarship in the interpretation of Greek myth.

Editor Lowell Edmunds is an emeritus professor of classics at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. His previous books include Intertextuality and The Reading of Roman Poetry and Poet, Public, and Performance in Ancient Greece.

FOCUS: Holiday Gift Shop -- Fields of Blood / Pink Sari Revolution

NOTE TO OUR READERS: From now through the holidays, History Wire will be offering capsule descriptions of the latest newly-published books -- both fiction and nonfiction -- to make your gift choices easier -- Happy Holidays to all!

Fields of Blood -- Religion and the History of Violence by Karen Armstrong, Knopf '14, $30, 512 pages, ASIN #0307957047. Index, bibliography, notes, unillustrated.

For the first time, religious self-identification is on the decline in America. Some analysts have cited as cause a post 9/11 perception: that faith is a source of aggression, intolerance, and divisiveness -- something bad for society.

But how accurate is that view? With deep learning and sympathetic understanding, Karen Armstrong sets out to discover the truth about religion and violence in each of the world's great religious traditions, taking us on an astonishing journey from prehistoric times to the present.

Author Karen Armstrong has written numerous books on religion, including A History of God. Her works has been translated into 45 languages.

Pink Sari Revolution -- A Tale of Women and Power in India, Norton '13 paperback. $15.95, 284 pages, ASIN #0393349470. Notes, unillustrated.

From the Prologue:

"On an otherwise quiet morning in the town of Atarra, in the backyard of feared liquor don and state legislator Purushottam Narish Dwivedi, Achchhe Lal Nishad was writing over the licking tongues of a fire. Two beefy men were dangling the wiry farmer over the flames,one holding him by the arms, the other by the leg. A third man was slapping him around the head and punching him sharply in the ribs."

Author Amana Fontanella-Khan writes for numerous newspapers and magazines. Previously based in Mumbai, she now lives in Brussels.

 

FOCUS: Holiday Gift Shop -- Crisis in an Atlantic Empire / In the Shadow of Zion / I'll Take You There

NOTE TO OUR READERS: From now through the holidays, History Wire will be offering capsule descriptions of the latest newly-published books -- both fiction and non-fiction -- to make your gift choices easier. Happy Holidays to all!

Crisis in an Atlantic Empire -- Spain and New Spain, 1808--1810 by Barbara H. Stein and Stanley J. Stein, Johns Hopkins UPress '14, $89.95, 795 pages, ASIN #1421414244. Index, bibliography, notes, unillustrated.

With a compelling narrative that weaves together story and thesis and brings to life immense archival research and emirical data, Crisis in an Atlantic Empire is a finely grained historical tour of the period covering 1808 to 1810, which is often called "the age of revolutions."

The study examines an accumulation of countervailing elements in a spasm of imperial crisls, as Spain and its major colony New Spain struggled to preserve traditional structures of exchange -- Spain's transatlantic trade system -- with Caribbean ports at Veracruz and Havana in wartime after 1804. Rooted in the struggle between businessmen seeking to expand their economic reach and the ruling class seeking to maintain its hegemonic control, the crisis sheds light on the contest between free trade and monopoly trade and the politics of preservation among an enduring and influential interest group: merchants.

About the authors: Barbara H. Stein (1916--2005) was an independent historian and former bibliographer for Latin America, Spain, and Portugal at Princeton University's Firestone Library. Stanley J. Stein is the Walter S. Carpenter Professor in Spanish Civilization and Culture, Emeritus at Princeton University.

In the Shadow of Zion -- Promised Lands Before Israel by Adam Rovner, New York UPress '14, 322 pages, ASIN #1479817481. Index, bibliography, notes, b&w images sprinkled through text.

In the Shadow of Zion brings to life the amazing true stories of six exotic visions of a Jewish national home outside of the biblical land of Israel. It is the only book to detail the connections between these schemes, which in turn explain the trajectory of modern Zionism. A gripping narrative drawn from archives the world over, In the Shadow of Zion recovers the mostly forgotten history of the Jewish territorialist movement, and the stories of the fascinating but now-obscure figures who championed it.

Provocative, thoroughly researched, and written to appeal to a broad audience, In the Shadow of Zion offers a timely perspective on Jewish power and powerlessness.

Author Adam Rovner is associate professor of English and Jewsh Literature at the University of Denver. His work has appeared in leading periodicals.

I'll Take You There -- Mavis Staples, the Staple Singers and the Music That Shaped the Civil Rights Era by Greg Kot. Scribner '14 paperback. $16, 308 pages, ASIN #1451647867. Index, discography, grouping of b&w glossy images.

 

This is the untold story of living legend Mavis Staples -- lead singer of the Staple Singers and a major figure in the music that shaped the civil rights era. Honing her prodigious talent on the Southern gospel circuit of the 1950s, Mavis and the Staple Singers went on to sell more than 30 million records, with message-oriented soul music that became a sound track to the civil rights movement -- inspiring Martin Luther King, Jr. himself.

Author Greg Kot has been the music critic at the Chicago Tribune since 1990, is cohost of a national syndicated public-radio program, and has written several books. He lives in Chicago.

FOCUS: Military History -- Paper Love / Knife Fights / Reckless

Paper Love -- Searching for the Girl my Grandfather Left Behind by Sarah Wildman, Riverhead Books '14, $27.95, 386 pages, ASIN #1594631557. Notes and sources, b&w images sprinkled through text.

From the dust jacket:

"She was your grandfather's true love, was the only answer given when Sarah Wildman presented her grandmother with a dozen photographs of a dark-haired, smiling young woman she had stumbled upon in her grandfather's old office.

"'True love'? It was stated as fact, and with no further information. Who was this woman? And what was her relationship to her grandfather? When pressed, her grandfather's sister offered a bit more: 'She was brilliant! And so in love with your grandfather.' It was tantalizing, but agonizingly open-ended.

"Growing up, Wildman could reel off the details of her grandfather Karl's escape from Nazi-occupied Vienna. He was the irresistibly charismatic center of her family, beloved by everyone he encountered. His flight from Vienna six months after Hitler annexed Austria in 1938 was at the center of his myth: Karl was a success at everything.

"But no narrative is as simple as it initially appears. Years after her grandfather's death, Wildman found a cache of letters written to him, in a file labeled 'Correspondence, Patients A-G." What she discovered inside weren't dry medical histories; what was written instead opened a path into the destroyed world that was her family's prewar Vienna. One woman's letters stood out: these were mailed from the woman in the photos. Her name was Valerie Scheftel -- Valy. She was Karl's lover, who had remained in Europe when he boarded a ship bound for the United States in Hamburg in September, 1938.

"But why had she not left with Karl? And more important, what had happened to her? With the help of the letters Valy had written to her grandfather, Wildman started to piece together her story. The letters revealed a woman desperate to escape and still clinging to the memory of a love that defined her years of freedom."

Sarah Wildman, a former New Republic staffer, has reported across Europe and the Middle East for The New York Times, Slate, The Nation, The New Yorker, and other publications. She lives in Washington, D.C.

Knife Fights -- A Memoir of Modern War in Theory and Practice by Lt. Col. John A. Nagl (Ret.), Penguin Press '14, $27.95, 269 pages, ASIN #1594204985. Index, further reading, notes, b&w images (including maps) sprinkled through text.

In explaining how the book Knife Fights came to be, author John A. Nagl writes,"This is a book about modern wars and how they affect the lives of young men and women. It is a tale of wars that needed to be fought and wars that were not necessary but that happened nonetheless, at enormous cost in blood and treasure.

"It is also an intellectual coming-of-age story, that of both the author and the institution to which he devoted most of his adult life, the American military. It is a book about counterinsurgency and its journey from the far periphery of U.S. military doctrine to its center, for better and, some would argue, for worse. It is also, then, a book about America's role in the world, and specifically about when and how we use military force abroad in the name of national security.

"The book largely takes the form of a memoir, which feels somewhat self-indulgent to me -- I was very much more shaped by than shaper of the events this book relates. But my hope is that following the arc of my own learning curve will be the easiest way for a reader to understand the broader story of the American military's radical adaptation to a world of threats very different from those involving nuclear weapons and Soviet tanks massed at te Fulda Gap that I studied at West Point a generation ago.

"Following that arc will also help to explain why, after decades of responsibility for the lives of American soldiers, I have recently shouldered the responsibility to prepare another generation of young men for a life of service far from the battlefield, in the classrooms and on the playing fields of friendly strife as the 9th headmaster of The Haverford School."

Author John A. Nagl is a retired lieutenant colonel of the U.S. Army. A graduate of West Point and a Rhodes Scholar, he received his Ph.D. from St. Antony's College, Oxford, where he wrote his thesis on counterinsurgency in Malaya and Vietnam.

Reckless -- The Racehorse Who Became a Marine Corps Hero by Tom Clavin, NAL Caliber '14, $28.95, 308 pages, ASIN #0451466500. Index, selected bibliography, author's note on sources, grouping of b&w glossy images.

From the Prologue of Reckless:

"It looked to be a routine operation. The main attack would be on Bunker Hill that night, and to distract the Communist forces, units of the 5th Marine Regiment were to assault a hill named Siberia. The 2d Battalion would lead it, accompanied by tanks and armored vehicles carrying high-powered flamethrowers.

"Even though his mission was to create a reasonably convincing diversion, Colonel Thomas A. Culhane, Jr., the commanding officer of the 5th Marines, wasn't taking any chances: He ordered a platoon from the 5th Anti-Tank Company to be part of it. The Chinese hated the recoilless rifles the platoon brought to the fight, and nothing pleased the colonel more than to make life hot and harrowing for the enemy.

"Leading the recoilless rifles gun crews was one of the best officers in the regiment. Second Lt. Eric Pedersen had assumed command of the platoon in the spring. He was that increasingly rare animal on the front lines in Korea, a Marine who had seen action in World War II.After two years of replacements, most seasoned veterans from that war were back home in the States.

"Pedersen was soon to turn 32, so he was not a gung-ho youngster, and he'd left a wife and two kids back in California. With a string pulled here or there, he could have gotten out of a trip across the Pacific Ocean, or at least have landed a cushy position well back behind the Main Line of Resistance -- the series of trenches and defensive works controlled by United Nations forces that spanned the width of Korea near the 38th Parallel -- where there were hot showers, hot meals, and movies with Jane Russell and Lauren Bacall."

Author Tom Clavin's books include the national bestselling titles Halsey's Typhoon, The Last Stand of Fox Company, Last Men Out, and the Heart of Everything, as well as sports titles Roger Maris, Gil Hodges, and The DiMaggios. His work has appeared in numerous leading newspapers and magazines. He lives in Sag Harbor, N.Y.

FOCUS: A Potpourri -- Tudor Adventurers / Baghdad

Tudor Adventurers -- An Arctic Voyage of Discovery: The Hunt for the Northeast Passage by James Evans, Pegasus Books '14, $27.95, 383 pages, ASIN #1605986119. Index, bibliography, notes, grouping of b&w and color glossy images. B&W maps.

 "In the first half of the sixteenth century a fundamental change was taking place in western Europe," writes author James Evans in this compelling new work. "Spain and Portugal had thrown off the shackles of ancient geography. In Asia and America they had discovered new lands, unknown to the old writers, and they had reached them by uncharted routes across the oceans.

"It was a time when inventions and discoveries not only rivalled those of the ancients but exceeded them. What of theirs, asked the English scholar, translator and chemist Richard Eden, could possibly be compared with printing or with the making of guns or fireworks? Ptolemy, the second-century Alexandrian who had exerted such enduring influence on geographical ideas in Europe, had undoubtedly been an 'excellent man', but still, Eden noted, 'there were many things hid from his knowledge.'

"The ancients had not, as some still thought, comprehended all things. Ptolemy, after all, 'knew nothing of America.' Or consider St. Augustine: would such a clever and learned man have doubted that the earth was round had he known how the Spaniards and Portuguese would sail around it, returning, by a straight course, more or less, to the point at which they had set off?

"The lesson was simple. No man, however brilliant, could know beyond what was tried and discovered by experience. What lay in the unexplored regions of the globe could not be calculated or imagined. Men must travel there to find out."

Historian James Evans took a First in history at Oriel College, Oxford University, and went on to do doctoral studies there. Since then he has produced historical documentaries for TV as well as written the accompanying books. Tudor Adventurers is his first book.

Baghdad -- City of Peace, City of Blood -- A History in Thirteen Centuries by Justin Marozzi. DaCapo Press '14, $32, 459 pages, ASIN #1846143136. Index, bibliography, notes, appendix, grouping of b&w glossy images.

From the dust jacket:

"For much of its extraordinary life, Baghdad, known for centuries as the 'City of Peace,' enjoyed both cultural and commercial preeminence. For five centuries it was the seat of the Abbasid Empire, a marvel of glittering palaces, exquisite parks, magnificent mosques, and Islamic colleges.

"It was a city boasting the most accomplished astronomers, mathematicians, doctors, musicians, and poets -- it was here, in the time of the caliphs, that the great Arabic classic One Thousand and One Nights was set. With its teeming markets watered by the Tigris, Baghdad was a thriving trading emporium, attracting merchants from Central Asia to the Atlantic; its economy was the envy of West and East alike.

"Yet Baghdad's inhabitants have also seen many terrible hardships, from epidemics and famines to invasions and devastating floods. And it has also been one of the most violent cities on earth. When U.S. troops entered in 2003, they became the latest participants in a turbulent history stretching back to the city's founding in 762.

"Over most of its thirteen-century history, Baghdad has endured the rule of brutal strongmen, from capricious caliphs to Saddam Hussein; and it has suffered violent occupations at the hands of its conquerors, from the Mongol Hulagu, grandson of Genghis Khan, to Tamerlane, known as the 'Sword Arm of Islam.'"

Author Justin Marozzi is an author and journalist who has traveled extensively in the Middle East and Muslim world and has worked in conflict and post-conflict Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, and Darfur. He has written four previous books.

FOCUS: Holiday Gift Shop -- Tradition! / Waterloo / Travels Through American History in the Mid-Atlantic / The Boston Girl

 

NOTE TO OUR READERS: From now through the holidays, History Wire will be offering capsule descriptions of the latest newly-published books -- both fiction and non-fiction -- to make your gift choices easier. Happy Holidays to all!

Tradition! by Barbara Isenberg, St Martin's Press '14, $26.99, 240 pages, ASIN #031259142X. Index, bibliography, notes, grouping of b&w glossy images, other b&w images sprinkled through text.

"A fiddler on the roof. Sounds crazy, no? But in our little village of Anatevka, you might say every one of us is a fiddler on the roof, trying to scatch out a pleasant, simple tune without breaking his neck. It isn't easy. You may ask, why do we stay up here if it's so dangerous? We stay because Anatevka is our home. And how do we keep our balance? That I can tell you in a word -- tradition."

And with those words, on September 22, 1964, Fiddler on the Roof opened on Broadway and began to sing and dance its way into the hearts of millions worldwide. But, you may ask, how does such a story begin? In 1960 a friend sent lyricist Sheldon Harnick a copy of Sholem Aleichem's 1909 novel, Wandering Stars, with the notion that it might make a good musical.

Harnic read the book, agreed, and sent it to his longtime collaborator, composer Jerry Bock. The two men, who had written the scores for Fiorello! and Tenderloin, were looking for a new project and took the idea to the playwright and librettist Joseph Stein. Stein countered with Aleichem's stories about a milkman named Tevye and his daughters living in an Eastern European Shtetl, thereby launching one of the greatest and most enduring works of the American musical theatre.

Author/journalist Barbara Isenberg has written and lectured about theatre for more than three decades and has written three previous books. A former staff reporter for the Los Angeles Times and The Wall Street Journal and has written for other leading newspapers and magazines as well. She lives in Los Angeles.

Waterloo -- Wellington, Napoleon, and the Battle that Saved Europe by Gordon Corrigan, Pegasus '14, $28.95, 341 pages, ASIN #1605986526. Index, select bibliography, notes, grouping of b&w and color glossy images, other images sprinkled throughout text.

Fought on Sunday, June 18th, 1815, by some 220,000 men over rain-sodden ground in what is now Belgium, the Battle of Waterloo brought an end to 23 years of almost continual war between imperial France and her enemies. A decisive defeat for Napoleon and a hard-won victory for the Allied armies of the Duke of Wellington and the Prussians, led by the stalwart Marshal Blucher, it brought about the French emperor's final exile to St. Helena and cleared the way for Britain to become the dominant military power in the world.

Author Gordon Corrigan is a member of the British Commission for Military History and a Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society. He is the author of A Great and Glorious Adventure and The Second World War. Corrigan lives in England.

Travels Through American History in the Mid-Atlantic -- A Guide for all Ages by Charles W. Mitchell, with maps by Elizabeth Church Mitchell, Johns Hopkins UPress '14, $24.95, 204 pages, ASIN #1421415143. Index, further reading listed at end of each chapter, b&w images sprinkled through text.

 

Few regions of the United States boast as many historically significant sites as the mid-Atlantic. Travels through American History in the Mid-Atlantic brings to life sixteen easily accessible historical destinations in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Washington, D.C.; the Potomac Valley, and Virginia.

Charles W. Mitchell walked these sites, interviewed historians and rangers, and read the letters and diaries of the men and women who witnessed -- and at the same time made -- history. He reveals in vivid prose the ways in which war, terrain, weather, and illness have shaped the American narrative. Each attraction, reenactment, and interactive exhibit in the book is described through the lens of the American experience, beginning in the colonial and revolutionary eras, continuing through the War of 1812, and ending with the Civil War.

Mitchell contrasts the ornate decor of Philadelphia's Independence Hall, for example, with the passionate debates that led to the Declaration of Independence, and the tranquil beauty of today's Harper's Ferry with the trauma its citizens endured during the Civil War, when the town six times fell to opposing forces.

Author Charles W. Mitchell is the editor of Maryland Voices of the Civil War, and winner of the Founders Award from the Museum of the Confederacy. A former travel writer for the Baltimore Sun, he and his wife live in an 18th century stone farmhouse in Parkton, MD.

The Boston Girl -- A Novel by Anita Diamant, Scribner '14, $26, 322 pages, ASIN #1439199353.

From the back cover:

The Boston Girl follows one woman's life through a period of dramatic change. Watching Addie Baum escape the constrictions of her upbringing, find ways through literature and work to broaden her own appreciation of the world, and in retrospect draw the outlines of a life fully lived is engrossing and captivating. Anita Diamant has created a wonderful portrait of a woman who both expresses and helps create the definition of a modern woman. And she does so while making the early years of the past century come to full-blooded life.

Author Anita Diamant is the best-selling author of the novels The Red Tent, Good Harbor, The Last Days of Dogtown, and Day After Night, and the collection of essays Pitching My Tent. She is the author of six nonfiction guides to contemporary Jewish life. She lives in Massachusetts.

 

FOCUS: Holiday Gift Shop -- Ambition and Desire / Snow & Steel / Hitler's Warrior / Midnight at the Pera Palace

NOTE TO OUR READERS: From now through the holidays, History Wire will be offering capsule descriptions of the latest newly-published books -- both fiction and non-fiction -- to make your gift choices easier. Happy Holidays to all!

Ambition and Desire -- The Dangerous Life of Josephine Bonaparte by Kate Williams, Ballantine Books '14, stated First Edition, First Printing. $30, 384 pages, ASIN #0345522834. Index, bibliography, notes, two groupings of color glossy images.

"Their love was legendary, their ambition flagrant and unashamed. Napoleon Bonaparte and his wife, Josephine, came to power during one of the most turbulent periods in the history of France. The story of the Corsican soldier's incredible rise has been well documented. Now, in this spellbinding account, Kate Williams draws back the curtain on the woman who beguiled him: her humble origins, her exorbitant appetites, and the tragic turn of events that led to her undoing."

Kate Williams fell in love with the 18th century while studying for her B.A. at Oxford University, and went on to earn an M.A. from the University of London and a D.Phil. in history from Oxford University. She has written two previous biographies, recounting the lives of British notables Emma Hamilton and Queen Victoria. Kate Williams lives in London.

Snow & Steel -- The Battle of the Bulge, 1944-45 by Peter Caddick-Adams, Oxford UPress '15, $34.95, 872 pages, ASIN #0199335141. Index, bibliography, notes, b&w images sprinkled through text.

"It was Hitler's last gamble. Codenamed Herbstnebel -- 'Autumn Mist' -- the operation was a massive counter-offensive involving a half-million German soldiers in an attempt to recapture Antwerp, encircle the four Allied armies, and force a treaty that would allow Hitler to turn his attention to the Eastern front.

"Planned in complete secrecy and playing out between December 16, 1944 and January 15, 1945, the Battle of the Bulge, as it has come to be iknown, was ultimately the bloodiest battle fought by U.S. forces in World War II, and indeed the largest land battle in American history. Fighting amid freezing temperatures, deep snow, and dense fog, some 89,000 of the 610,000 American servicemen committed to the campaign were wounded or killed. The legacies of Bastogne and Malmedy -- heroism and horror -- continue to reverberate in the imagination of generation of generations."

As lecturer in military history and current defense issues, author Dr. Peter Caddick-Adams has taught at Cranfield University and the UK Defence Academy for more than 15 years.He is author of Monte Cassino: Ten Armies in Hell and Monty and Rommel: Parallel Lives.

Hitler's Warrior -- The Life and Wars of SS Colonel Jochen Peiper by Danny S. Parker, DaCapo '14, $29.99, 441 pages, ASIN #0306821540.  Index, notes, grouping of b&w glossy images.

"Handsome, intelligent, impetuous, and dedicated to the Nazi cause, SS Colonel Jochen Peiper (1915--1976) was one of the most controversial figures of World War II. After volunteering for the Waffen-SS at an early age, Peiper quickly rose to prominence as Heinrich Himmler's ever-present personal adjutant in the early years of the war.

Sent later to the fighting front with the fearsome 1st SS Panzer Division, Peiper became a legend for his flamboyant and brutal style of warfare. As one of Hitler's favorites, he was chosen to spearhead the Ardennes Offensive, later known as the Battle of the Bulge.

Author Danny S. Parker has written extensively about the Ardennes military campaign and the Malmedy massacre, including the highly acclaimed Fatal Crossroads, Battle of the Bulge, and To Win the Winter Sky. He lives in Cocoa Beach, FL.

Midnight at the Pera Palace -- The Birth of Modern Istanbul by Charles King, Norton '14, stated First Edition, First Printing. $27.95, 476 pages, ASIN #0393089142. Index, bibliography, notes, glossary, chronology, b&w images sprinkled through text.

"When the Ottoman Empire collapsed, so many spies mingled in the lobby of Istanbul's legendary grand hotel, the Pera Palace, that the manager posted a sign politely requesting such 'visitors' to relinquish seats to paying guests.

"As a multi-ethnic empire transformed itself into a 'Turkish' nation, Istanbul improvised. White Russian refugees sold family heirlooms on the sidewalk; an African-American impresario founded a jazz club; a Greek emigre' songbird created a plaintive new sound; and a Boston professor unveiled the long-hidden treasures of the Hagia Sophia. A Miss Turkey became the first Muslim beauty queen, dazzling pageant judges across Europe. And at midnight on December 31, 1925, citizens of the newly proclaimed Turkish Republic celebrated the New Year on a nationally unified calendar and clock for the very first time."

Author Charles King is a professor of international affairs and government at Georgetown University. He has written numerous books, including Odessa, and lives in Washington, D.C.

FOCUS: Gift Shop -- The Italian Americans / Massacre / Ambition and Desire / The Glass Cage, The Discovery of Middle Earth

NOTE TO OUR READERS: From now through the holidays, History Wire will be offering capsule descriptions of the latest published books -- both fiction and non-fiction -- to make your gift choices easier. Happy Holidays to all!

The Italian Americans -- A History by Maria Laurino, Norton '14, companion to the PBS Series by John Maggio, in oversized format on glossy stock, $35, 308 pages, ASIN #0393241297. Index, credits, bibliography, a note on sources, color glossy images sprinkled through text.

For readers of Italian heritage and many more who aren't, this lush history offers a rich and diverse saga of the Italian American experience. Looking beyond the familiar Little Italys and caricatures fostered by popular culture, (the author) "tells the stories of Sicilian workers imported to replace the labor of freed slaves on sugar-cane plantations in Louisiana, the grim realities of the 'mezzogiorno' from which most immigrants came, the lynchings of Italian Americans in New Orleans, and the first uses of the word 'mafia.'"

Author Maria Laurino is the author of Were You Always An Italian?, a national bestseller, and Old World Daughter, New World Mother. An essayist, journalist, and speechwriter, Laurino also teaches creative nonfiction at New York University.

Massacre -- The Life and Death of the Paris Commune by John Merriman, BasicBooks '14, $29.99, 327 pages, ASIN #0465020178. Index, notes, b&w images sprinkled through text.

"Following the disastrous French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War," writes historian John Merriman, "hungry and politically disenchanged Parisians took up arms against their government in the name of a more just society. In the spring of 1811, these self-proclaimed Communards declared themselves free. In eight glorious weeks, the Paris Commune gave rise to some of the grandest political dreams of the 19th century -- before culminating in horrific violence at the hands of government troops."

Author John Merriman is the Charles Seymour Professor of History at Yale University and author of many books, including The Dynamite Club and the classic History of Modern Europe. He lives in Connecticut and Balazuc, France.

Ambition and Desire -- The Dangerous Life of Josephine Bonaparte by Kate Williams, Ballantine Books '14, $30, 384 pages, ASIN #0345522834. Index, illustration credits, bibliography, notes, two groupings of color glossy images.

"Their love was legendary, their ambition flagrant and unashamed," writes author and historian Kate Williams. "Napoleon Bonaparte and his wife, Josephine, came to power during one of the most turbulent periods in the history of France. The story of the Corsican soldier's incredible rise has been well documented. Now, in this spellbinding account, Kate Williams draws back the curtain on the woman who beguiled him: her humble origins, her exorbitant appetites, and the tragic turn of events that led to her undoing."

Author Kate Williams fell in love with the 18th century while studying for her B.A. at Oxford University, and went on to earn an M.A. from the University of London and a D.Phil. in history from Oxford University. She has previously written a novel and two biographies, one on Queen Victoria. Kate Williams lives in London.

The Glass Cage -- Automation and US by Nicholas Carr, Norton '14, 276 pages, ASIN #0393240762. Index, notes, no bibliography or illustrations.

"In The Glass Cage," best-selling author Nicholas Carr digs behind the headlines about factory robots and self-driving cars, wearable computers and digitized medicine, as he explores the hidden costs of granting software domination over our work and our leisure. Even as they bring ease to our lives, these programs are stealing something essential from us.

"Drawing on psychological and neurological sudies that underscore how tightly people's happiness and satisfaction are tied to performing hard work in the real world, Carr reveals something we already suspect; shifting our attention to computer screens can leave us disengaged and discontented."

Author Nicholas Carr has also written The Shallows, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, as well as The Big Switch and Does IT Matter? His articles and essays have appeared in leading newspapers and magazines.

The Discovery of Middle Earth -- Mapping the Lost World of the Celts, by Graham Robb, Norton 14 paperback. $16.95, 387 pages, ASIN #039308163X. Geographical index, general index, works cited, notes, chronology, b&w images sprinkled through text.

From the back cover:

"In this real-life historical treasure hunt, best-selling author Graham Robb -- 'one of the more unusual and appealing historians currently striding the planet (New York Times)' -- reveals the mapping of ancient Gaul as a reflection of the heavens, demonstrates the lasting influence of Druid science, and recharts the exploration of the world and the spread of Christianity. This 'fascinating' (Los Angeles Times) history offers nothing less than an entirely new understanding of the birth of modern Europe."

Author Graham Robb is the author of three prize-winning biographies, each one selected as a New York Times Best Book. He lives on the Anglo-Scottish border.