Steve Goddard's History Wire

FOCUS: A Little of This, A Little of That -- President Lincoln Assassinated!! / The Shadow of the Past / Strong as Death is Love

President Lincoln Assassinated!! -- The Firsthand Story of the Murder, Manhunt, Trial, and Mourning, compiled and introduced by Harold Holzer, The Library of America '14, $29.95, 446 pages, ASIN #1598533738. Index, sources, chronology, grouping of b&w and color images, other b&w images sprinkled through text.

 

"Shortly before he fell victim to an assassin's bullet, a spectrally haggard, sleep-deprived Abraham Lincoln had a portentous dream -- or so his longtime friend and aide, Ward Hill Lamon, later remembered," writes author and long-time Lincoln authority Harold Holzer in his latest book.

"Not until ten days after was the President ready to unburden himself by sharing the details of his haunting nightmare. And then he told not only Lamon, but also his chronically anxious wife, Mary -- even though he insisted that he did not believe in dreams and urged his listeners to take no need, either.

"Awakened from a deep slumber by the sound of 'subdued' sobs,' as Lincoln began his recollection, he dreamt that he left his bed to prowl the empty White House in search of the source of the commotion. Slowly he headed downstairs alone, greeted only by the ever louder 'mournful sounds' of 'pitiful sobbing.' Finally reaching the East Room, he came face-to-face with what he called a 'sickening surprise.'

"Before me was a catafalque,' Loncoln told his enthralled listeners,' on which rested a corpse wrapped in funeral vestments' and encircled by military guards and 'a throng' of tearful mourners. 'Who is dead in the White House?' Lincoln recalled demanding of one of the soldiers. 'The President,' came the sad reply; he was killed by an assassin!' A 'loud burst of grief from the crowd' then woke the dreamer from his slumber. Quoting Hamlet, Lincoln admitted, 'I slept no more that night,' for 'to sleep' was 'perchance to dream.'

Author Harold Holzer has authored, co-authored, and edited more than 40 books, mostly on Abraham Lincoln, including The Lincoln Anthology: Great Writers on His Life and Legacy from 1860 to Now. The proceeds from the sales of this book will be used to support the mission of The Library of America.

The Shadow of the Past -- Reputation and Military Alliances Before the First World War by Gregory D. Miller, Cornell UPress '11, $45, 248 pages, ASIN #0801450314. Index, five appendices, b&w images sprinkled through text, footnotes.

From the dust jacket:

"In The Shadow of the Past, Gregory D. Miller examines the role that reputation plays in international politics, emphasizing the importance of reliability -- confidence that, based on past political actions, a country will make good on its promises -- in the formation of military alliances. Challenging recent scholarship that focuses on the importance of credibility -- a state's reputation for following through on its threats -- Miller finds that reliable states have much greater freedom in forming alliances than those that invest resources in building military force but then use it inconsistently.

"To explore the formation and maintenance of alliances based on reputation, Miller draws on insights from both political science and business theory to track the evolution of great power relations before the First World War. He starts with the British decision to abandon 'splendid isolation' in 1900 and examines three crises -- the First Moroccan Crisis (1905-06), the Bosnia--Herzegovina Crisis (1908--09), and the Agadir Crisis (1911) -- leading up to the war. He determines that states with a reputation for being a reliable ally have an easier time finding other reliable allies, and have greater autonomy within their alliances, than do states with a reputation for unreliability. Further, a history of reliability carries long-term benefits, as states tend not to lose allies even when their reputation declines."

Author Gregory D. Miller, who teaches at Oklahoma State University, has taught courses in international relations and terrorism at the College of William & Mary and the University of Oklahoma and served as director of the Summer Workshop on Teaching about Terrorism.

Strong As Death Is Love -- The Song of Songs -- Ruth -- Esther -- Jonah -- Daniel, A Translation with Commentary by Robert Alter, Norton '15, $27.95, 234 pages, ASIN #0393243044. Notes, unillustrated.

From the dust jacket:

"The Song of Songs; Ruth; Esther; Jonah; and Daniel offer readers a range of pleasures not usually associated with the Bible. As distant in time from the Five Books of Moses as Updike is from Shakespeare, these Late Biblical books are innovative, entertaining literary works. Women often stand center stage.

"The Song of Songs is a celebration of young love, frankly sensuous, with no reference to God or covenant. It offers some of the most beautiful love poems of the ancient world. The story of Queen Esther's shrewd triumph is also a secular entertaining, with clear traces of farce and sly sexual comedy. The character of Ruth embodies the virtues of loyalty, love, and charity in a harmonious world.

"Enigma replaces harmony in Daniel's feverish night dreams. The apocalyptic strangeness of Daniel echoes in works from the New Testament's Book of Revelations to the lyrics of Bob Dylan. And Jonah, the tale of a giant fish who, on God's command, swallows the prophet and imprisons him in his dark, wet innards for three days, ends with a question that lingers, unanswered, leaving the reader to ponder the many limitations of humankind."

Author Robert Alter has won the PEN Center Literary Award for Translation and the Koret Jewish Book Award for Translation. Alter is the Class of 1937 Professor of Hebrew and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley.

 

FOCUS: A Potpourri -- The B-Side / A Great and Glorious Adventure / The Dignity Jurisprudence of the Constitutional Court of South Africa / Beijing's Economic Statecraft During the Cold War 1949-1991

 

The B-Side -- The Death of Tin Pan Alley and the Rebirth of the Great American Song by Ben Yagoda, Riverhead Books '15, $27.95, 308 pages, ASIN #1594488495. Index, books cited, notes, two groupings of b&w glossy images.

"One of the biggest demographic changes of the 20th century was the northern migration of African-Americans, and its effect on popular song was as great as on any other facet of American life," writes author Ben Yagoda in his latest work.

"A key hub was Chicago, where Sam Cooke, born in Mississippi in 1931, moved as a toddler with his family. Cooke started out singing gospel, moved into doo-wop, and released his first single as a solo artist in 1957. It was a tune he had written, 'You Send Me,' and it shot to number one on the charts. (On the B side was Cooke's version of the George Gershwin--Ira Gershwin--Dubose Heyward "Summertime.')

"Around the same time, two Chicago guys named Jerry Butler and Curtis Mayfield were singing in a quartet called the Northern Jubilee Gospel Singers. In 1958 they went secular as Jerry Butler and the Impressions; Mayfield, on guitar, was the only instrumentalist. He also proved to be an inspired and prolific songwriter. As the Impressions (Butler left early on to go solo), the group had a string of hits in the early sixties, climaxed in 1965 by Mayfield's gospel-influenced protest song 'People Get Ready,' number nine on the Mojo list of the greatest songs of all time.

"An even bigger urban center, as far as music was concerned, was Detroit, where the percentage of black residents increased more than sevenfold between 1920 and 1960, from 4 per cent to more than 29 per cent. Berry Gordy was born in the city in 1929, to parents who had come up from Georgia seven years earlier.

"He returned from serving in Korea in 1953, spent some time as a professional boxer and a record store manager, then succeeded in placing some songs he'd written with the singer Jackie Wilson. He began managing a few performers -- notably the Miracles, a local singing group, led by William 'Smokey' Robinson -- and in 1959 launched his own record label, Tamla, which would in due course change its name to Motown."

Ben Yagoda teaches journalism at the University of Delaware and has written or edited 12 books. He lives in Swarthmore, PA with his wife.

A Great and Glorious Adventure -- A History of the Hundred Years War and the Birth of Renaissance England by Gordon Corrigan, Pegasus '14, $27.95, 308 pages, ASIN #1848879261. Index, select bibliography, notes, b&w images sprinkled through text.

 

From the dust jacket:

"In this captivating new history of a conflict that raged for over a century, Gordon Corrigan reveals the horrors of battle and the machinations of power that have shaped a millennium of Anglo-French relations.

"The Hundred Years War was fought between 1337 and 1453 over English claims to both the throne of France by right of inheritance and large parts of the country that had been at one time Norman or, later, English. The fighting ebbed and flowed, but despite their superior tactics and great victories at Cre'cy, Poitiers, and Agincourt, the English could never hope to secure their claims in perpetuity: France was wealthier and far more populous, and while the English won the battles, they could not hope to hold forever the lands they conquered.

"Military historian Gordon Corrigan's gripping narrative of these epochal events is combative and refreshingly alive, and the great battles and personalities of the period -- Edward III, The Black Prince, Henry V, and Joan of Arc among them -- receive the full attention and colorful reassessment they deserve."

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

The Dignity Jurisprudence of the Constitutional Court of South Africa -- 2 Volumes, Edited by Drucilla Cornell, Stu Woolman, Sam Fuller, Jason Brickhill, Michael Bishop and Diana Dunbar, Fordham UPress '13, 995 pages, ASIN #0823250083. General index, index of cases, compilation of legal cases, unillustrated.

From the dust jacket:

"Since the Second World War, dignity has increasingly been recognized as an important moral and legal value. Although important examples of dignity-based arguments can be found in Western European and North American case law and legal theory, the dignity jurisprudence of the Constitutional Court of South Africa is widely considered to be the most sweeping in the world.

"In part, this is related to the unique provisions of the South African Constitution in areas such as socioeconomic rights and allowing dignity to be taken into the sphere of economic justice as well as that of human rights.

"This book brings together the first 16 years of constitutional jurisprudence addressing the meaning, role, and reach of dignity in the law of South Africa as a multiracial democracy. The case law is coupled with analysis from a range of selected contributors. The book will therefore be a crucial resource for anyone seeking to evaluate dignity, whether in law or in human life more broadly."

About the Editors:

Drucilla Cornell is Professor in Political Science, Women's Studies, and Comparative Literature at Rutgers University. Stu Woolman is Professor & Elizabeth Bradley Chair of Ethics, Governance & Sustainable Development, University of the Witwatersrand. Sam Fuller is a lawyer practicing in Cape Town. Jacon Brickhill is a member of the Johannesburg bar and Council, Constitution Litigation Unit, Legal Resources Centre. Michael Bishop is Advocate of the High Court of South Africa. Diana Dunbar in an independent editor in South Africa.

Beijing's Economic Statecraft During the Cold War 1949--1991 by Shu Guang Zhang, Woodrow Wilson Center/Johns Hopkins UPress '14, laminated, illustrated cover; $65, 477 pages, ASIN #1421415836. Index, bibliography, notes, chronology, unillustrated.

From the back cover:

"Beijing's Economic Statecraft During the Cold War, 1949--1991, describes China's use of economic instruments in pursuit of foreign policy goals from the foundation of the People's Republic to the end of the Cold War. Providing an in-depth case analysis of China's economic diplomacy from 1949 to 1991.

"Shu Guang Zhang focuses on the nuts and bolts of Beijing's policymaking and aims to reconstruct China's economic statecraft behavior, both historically and conceptually. Beijing's Economic Statecraft not only assesses how China's foreign economic policies played out in its relations with the United States, the United Kingdom, and Japan but also looks at how Moscow, Hanoi, Pyongyang, Tirana, and Ulan Bator interacted with Beijing in their poliltical economic relations.

"The book is based on a wide array of new sources: diplomatic documents from Chinese and Russian archives, the Nixon Presidential Materials Project, translated documents collected by the Cold War International History Project, recently published writings of Chinese leaders, chronologies of these Chinese leaders, and publications by Chinese scholars."

Author Shu Ghang Zhang is professor and vice rector for academic affairs at the Macau University of Science and Technology.

FOCUS: Waterfowl and Wetlands -- Ducks, Geese, and Swans of North America

Ducks, Geese, and Swans of North America by Guy Baldassarre, Johns Hopkins UPress '14, $69.95, two volume boxed set, 208 pages, ASIN #1421407515. 144 color photos, 138 color illustrations, 50 maps.

Nearly three-quarters of a century have passed since Ducks, Geese, and Swans of North America's first edition reached the bookstores in 1942. Considered since then as a must-have for professional biologists, birders, waterfowl hunters, decoy collectors, and wildlife managers, this fully-revised and updated edition provides definitive information on the continent's 46 species. Included are maps of both winter and breeding ranges, together with images by top waterfowl photographers and acclaimed artwork by Robert W. (Bob) Hines.

Ducks, Geese, and Swans of North America was originally written by F. H. Kortright and later revised by Frank Bellrose. This latest edition continues the legacy of the original auhors as updated by renowned waterfowl biologist Guy Baldassarre.

In the words of the editors, each species account contains "in-depth sections on identification, distribution, migration behavior, habitat, population status, breeding biology, rearing of young, recruitment and survival, food habits and feeding ecology, molts and plumages, and conservation and management." An appendix contains comparative illustrations of ducklings, goslings, and cygnets.

Guy Baldassarre was a professor of wildlife ecology at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse until his death in 2012. He is the co-author of the textbook Waterfowl Ecology and Management.

FOCUS: American History -- Soldiers in the Army of Freedom / Madison's Music / The Virtues of Abandon

Soldiers in the Army of Freedom -- The 1st Kansas Colored, the Civil War's First African American Combat Unit by Ian Michael Spurgeon, Oklahoma UPress '14, $29.95, 400 pages, ASIN #0806146184. Index, bibliography, notes, two appendices, grouping of b&w images, other b&w images sprinkled through text.

 

"Over fence rails stacked to form a barricade, soldiers gazed at the peaceful landscape falling into shadows," writes historian Ian Michael Spurgeon in his latest work. "It was beautiful country, typical of western Missouri, the stillness interrupted only by an occasional gust of wind. Yet in the timber behind the mounds to the south lay the enemy.

"This was Union territory, but only in name. Most local residents, including Enoch Toothman, the owner of the farm the soldiers now occupied, were Southern sympathizers. Toothman's son John, was, in the words of one federal cavalryman, 'an unwilling guest of the guard house at Ft. Lincoln' for making war on the Union.

"Enoch and his neighbors outside Butler, Missouri, were now the unwilling hosts to 250 Union soldiers from Kansas who had arrived two days before to kill or capture secessionist guerrillas. They had constructed a fortified camp on the farm, and now waited for the opportunity to scatter rebel Missourians."

Author Ian Michael Spurgeon, who holds a Ph.D. in history from the University of Southern Mississippi, is currently a historian in the World War II Division of the Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office in Washington, D.C. He has written numerous articles on U.S. history and also one previous book.

Madison's Music -- On Reading the First Amendment by Burt Neuborne, New Press '15, $25.95, 260 pages, ASIN #1620970414. Index, notes, unillustrated.

In his introductory chapter, author Burt Neuborne discusses "Reading the First Amendment as a Poem....This is not a work of history," he writes. "I claim no special expertise about James Madison's interior life. Nor do I claim to be describing his subjective purpose. I don't even claim that Madison himself was wholly responsible for his music. As we'll see, Madison's arranger, Robert Sherman, deserves some credit. Rather, it is an effort to read the First Amendment's 45 words -- all of them -- as a coherent whole in order to recapture what I call Madison's Music.

"I rest this book on the phrasing, rhythm, order, and placement of the 45 words themselves. When we read a great poem, we do not ask whether the poet intended to achieve a particular emotional aesthetic, or intellectual response. It is enough that the choreography of words triggers a responsive chord in a careful reader.

"The thesis of this book, dear reader, is that a careful study of the order, placement, meaning, and structure of the 45 words in Madison's First Amendment will trigger a responsive poetic chord in you that will enable us to recapture the music of democracy in our most important political text."

Author Burt Neuborne is the Inez Milholland Professor of Civil Liberties and the founding legal director of the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law School and is the author of three scholarly books. He lives with his wife in New York.

The Virtues of Abandon -- An Anti-Individualist History of the French Enlightenment by Charly Coleman, Stanford UP '14, 402 pages, ASIN #0804784434.

From the dust jacket:

"France in the 18th century glittered, but also seethed, with new goods and ideas. In the halls of Versailles, the streets of Paris, and the soul of the Enlightenment itself, a struggle was being waged over the question of ownership -- of property, of position, even of personhood. Those who championed the possession of material, spiritual, and existential goods faced the assaults of Christian mystics, philosophical materialists, and political revolutionaries.

"Charly Coleman traces the aims and activities of these seemingly disparate groups and the current of anti-individualism that permeated theology, philosophy, and politics throughout the period.

"Fired by the desire to abandon the self, men and women sought new ways to relate to God, nature, and nation. They joined illicit mystic cults, induced consciousness-altering dreams, railed against unfettered consumption, and ultimately renounced the privileges that defined their social existence. The denouement was the French Revolution, during which God and king were toppled from their thrones."

 

FOCUS: American Fiction -- A Spool of Blue Thread / Unbranded / Beyond the Call

A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler, Knopf '15, $25.95, 358 pages, ASIN #1101874279.

One of the major genres of American literature is fiction on the theme of the family, practiced by such accomplished masters as Sue Miller and Sue Monk Kidd. Few in this field have been more productive than Anne Tyler, who has just published her 20th novel, A Spool of Blue Thread (the eleventh, Breathing Lessons, won a Pulitzer Prize).

The following is from the dustjacket:

"'It was a beautiful, breezy, yellow-and-green afternoon...' This is how Abby Whitshank always begins the story of how she fell in love with Red that day in July 1959. The Whitshanks are one of those families that radiate togetherness: an indefinable, enviable kind of specialness. But they are also like all families, in that the stories they tell themselves reveal only part of the picture.

"Abby and Red and their four grown children have accumulated not only tender moments, laughter, and celebrations, but also jealousies, disappointments, and carefully guarded secrets. From Red's father and mother, newly arrived in Baltimore in the 1920s, to Abby and Red's grandchildren carrying the family legacy boisterously into the 21st century, here are four generations of Whitshanks, their lives unfolding in and around the sprawling, lovingly worn Baltimore house that has always been their anchor.

"Brimming with all the insight, humor, and generosity of spirit that are the hallmarks of Anne Tyler's work, A Spool of Blue Thread tells a poignant yet unsentimental story in praise of family in all its emotional complexity. It is a novel to cherish."

Author Anne Tyler was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1941 and grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and lives in Baltimore, MD.

Unbranded -- Four Men and Sixteen Mustangs. Three Thousand Miles Across the American West by Ben Masters, Texas A&M University Press '15, in oversized format on glossy stock. $40, 188 pages, 165 color photos, ASIN #1623492815. Dozens of color photos (some of them full-page) sprinkled through text.

"On an epic 3,000-mile journey through the most pristine backcountry of the American West, four friends rode horseback across an almost contiguous stretch of unspoiled public lands, border to border, from Mexico to Canada," writes author Ben Masters in his new book. "For their trail horses, they adopted wild mustangs from the U.S. Bureau of Land Management that were perfectly adapted to the rocky terrain and harsh conditions of desert and mountain travel.

"A meticulously planned but sometimes unpredictable route brought them face to face with snowpack, downpours and wildlife; unrelenting heat, raging rivers and sheer cliffs; jumping cactus, rattlesnakes and charging bull moose; sickness, injury, and death. But they also experienced a special camaraderie with each other and with the mustangs.

"The trip's inspiration and architect, Ben Masters, is joined here by the three other riders -- Ben Thamer, Thomas Glover, and Jonny Fitzsimons; two memorable teachers and horse trainers and the film's producers and intrepid cameramen in the telling of this improbable story of adventure and self-discovery."

Author Ben Masters, CEO of Fin & Fur Films, LLC, is an avid horseman, angler, hunter and packer; an accomplished photographer and a dedicated advocate for conservation.

Beyond the Call -- The True Story of One World War II Pilot's Covert Mission to Rescue POWs on the Eastern Front by Lee Trimble with Jeremy Dronfield, Berkley Caliber '15, $26.95, 323 pages, ASIN #042527604X. Index, bibliography, notes, grouping of b&w glossy images.

"By the fall of 1944, the mighty forces of the Red Army, at a bitter cost in lives, had pushed the Nazi invaders out of Russia," write authors Lee Trimble and Jeremy Dronfield in their new work. "As the front line rolled steadily across the Ukraine and Poland, the grim prison camps of the Third Reich were discovered and liberated: concentration camps, death camps, slave labor and POW camps. In their thousands, the suffering inmates were set loose.

"The Soviets' attitude to the freed prisoners of war was not charitable. Setting the moral mood for the 'Great Patriotic War' against Nazi Germany, Stalin had decreed in 1941 that there were no prisoners of war, only traitors and cowards. His declaration, coupled with the culture of savage violence on the Eastern Front, led to cruel treatment and even atrocities against former Russian soldiers who were liberated from POW camps.

"It also affected the treatment of Allied ex-prisoners. They were left to wander, starving, sick, and dying. Some were fired upon indiscrimately by Russian troops; some were robbed; many more were marched to the rear and abandoned. Even worse, hundreds were rounded up into camps where they were treated as potential spies or anti-Soviet partisans and kept in squalid conditions."

About the authors:

Lee Trimble was educated in science and technology at Pennsylvania State University and received an MS at Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey. Recently retired from the tech world, he now works rehabilitating problem dogs.

Jeremy Dronfield is a writer, biographer, and novelist, with special interest in WWII aviation. He obtained a Ph.D. at Cambridge University and has published several previous books.

FOCUS: A Little of This, A Little of That -- Frog / Appomattox / Isis in America

Frog -- A Novel by Mo Yan, Viking '14, $27.95, 400 pages, ASIN #0525427988.

From the dust jacket:

"Before the cultural revolution, narrator Tadpole's feisty Aunt Gugu is a respected midwife in her rural community. She combines modern medical knowledge with a healer's touch to save the lives of village women and their babies. Gugu is beautiful, charismatic, and of an unimpeachable political background.

"After a disastrous love affair with a defector leaves Gugu reeling, she throws herself zealously into enforcing China's draconian new family planning policy by any means necessary, be it forced sparing no one, not her own family, not even herself.

"Once beloved, Gugu becomes the living incarnation of a reviled social policy violently at odds with deeply rooted social values. Spanning the pre-revolutionary era and the country's modern-day consumer society, Mo Yan's taut and engrossing examination of Chinese society will be read for generations to come."

Author Mo Yan (literally "don't speak") is the pen name of Guan Moye. Born in 1955 to a peasant family in Shandong province, he is the author of ten novels, including Red Sorghum, which was made into a feature film. Mo Yan is the winner of the 2012 Nobel Prize in Literature.  He lives in Beijing.

Translator Howard Goldblatt is widely recognized as one of the best  translators from Chinese to English. He lives in Colorado.

Appomattox -- The Last Days of Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia by Michael E. Haskew, Zenith Press '15, $30, 256 pages, ASIN #0760348170. Index, bibliography, endnotes, b&w images sprinkled through text.

 

If you're an American, whether you're an advocate for the North or the South, all will agree that Appomattox represents one of the hallmarks of the Civil War. In the words of author Michael E. Haskew:

"Appomattox: The Last Days of Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia encompasses the defense and evacuation of the Confederate capital of Richmond, the horrific combat in the trenches of Petersburg, General Robert E. Lee's withdrawal toward the Carolinas in his forlorn hope of a rendezvous with General Joseph E. Johnston's Army of Tennessee to carry on the fight, the relentless pursuit of Union forces, and the ultimate realization that further resistance against overwhelming odds was futile.

"The Army of Northern Virginia was the fighting soul of the Confederacy in the Eastern Theater of the Civil War. From its inception, it fought against overwhelming odds. Union forces might have occupied territory, but as long as the Confederate army was active in the field, the rebellion was alive. Through four years of bitter conflict, the Army of Northern Virginia and its longtime commander....became the stuff of legend. By April 1865, its days were numbered."

Author Michael E. Heskew, a researcher, writer, and editor of many military history subjects for more than 20 years, puts the hardship and deprivation suffered by this Army's soldiers while defending their home and ideals into proper perspective.

Isis in America by Henry Steel Olcott, Tarcher Penguin '14 paperback. $15.95, 459 pages, ASIN #0399169237. Index, timeline, footnotes, unillustrated.

From the back cover:

"There are few more intriguing, or polarizing, figures in modern spiritual history than Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831-1891). The cofounder of the Theosophical Society, Blavatsky remains a figure of fascination more than a century after her death.

"In Isis in America -- one of the most unique documents of modern American spiritual history -- we get an intimate look at Blavatsky, through the eyes of Theosophical Society cofounder, writer, lawyer, investigator, and Blavatsky confidant Henry Steel Olcott.

"Olcott spent years by Blavatsky's side, witnessing acts of aura projection and spontaneously produced objects -- and experiencing his own spiritual awakening under the tutelage of hidden masters -- as they laid the foundations for a new era in esoteric spirituality.

"As a bonus, this special edition includes an annotated timeline on the remarkable life of Henry Steel Olcott by Mitch Horowitz."

Author Colonel Henry Steel Olcott (1832--1907) was a key figure in 19th century alternative spirituality, cofounding the Theosophical Society with Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky in 1875. This edition reproduces the first volume of his published diaries.

 

FOCUS: A Potpourri -- American Reckoning / Mastering the West / Side by Side

American Reckoning -- The Vietnam War and Our National Identity by Christian G. Appy, Viking '15, $28.95, 396 pages, ASIN #0670025399. Index, notes, unillustrated.

 

"'I didn't know there was a bad war,' George Evans recalled," as recounted by historian Christian G. Appy in the Introduction to his latest work on the Vietnam War. "He grew up in Pittsburgh in the 1950s. Starting at age 6, before and after school, he helped his father deliver blocks of ice to poor and working-class people who could not afford the shiny new refrigerators advertised in all the magazines. George understood that the American Dream was beyond the grasp of his parents and most of their friends and neighbors. He was a streetwise kid. He knew life was difficult and the future uncertain.

"But there was one thing George trusted completely -- his nation's military power and the good that it did. With all his heart he believed the United States was on the side of justice and freedom and all our wars were noble. Despite personal hardships, you could always count on Americans to be the good guys, and always victorious. It was simply unimaginable that the United States might betray that faith.

"'I was raised in a family and neighborhood of extreme patriots,' George explains. 'My father was the commander of his VFW post and I got to go to the club and hang out with the veterans. I was their little mascot.' He especially looked forward to Flag Day, when he would help the World War II vets decorate the graves in a military cemetery. 'Imagine how beautiful it looked to a kid to see hundreds of graves in a geometric pattern, all with shining bronze plates and flags waving in the wind. You just can't exaggerate the pull of the military on kids from neighborhoods like mine. Everything you'd seen and heard your whole life made it feel inevitable and right.'"

Author Christian G. Appy is a professor of history at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and the author of two previous books on the Vietnam War. He lives in Amherst.

Mastering the West -- Rome and Carthage at War by Dexter Hoyos, Oxford UPress '15, $29.95, 360 pages, ASIN #0199860106. Index, bibliography, notes, glossary timeline, appendix, b&w images sprinkled through text.

From the dust jacket:

"To say the Punic Wars (264-146 BC) were a turning point in world history is a vast understatement. These bloody and protracted conflicts pitted two flourishing Mediterranean powers against one another, leaving one an unrivalled giant and the other a pile of ash. To later observers, a collision between these civilizations seemed inevitable and yet to the Romans and Carthaginians at the time hostilities first erupted seemingly out of nowhere, with what were expected to be inconsequential results.

'Mastering the West offers a thoroughly engrossing narrative of this century of battle in the western Mediterranean, while treating a full range of themes: the antagonists' military, naval, economic, and demographic resources; the political structures of both republics; and the postwar impact of the conflicts on the participants and victims.

"The narrative also investigates questions of leadership and the contributions and mistakes of leaders like Hannibal, Fabius the Delayer, Scipio Africanus, Masinissa, and Scipio Aemilianus. Dexter Hoyos, a leading expert of the period, treats the two great powers evenly, without neglecting the important roles played by the peripheral states of Syracuse, Macedon, and especially Numidia."

Author Dexter Hoyos is retired Associate Professor of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Sydney, Australia. He has written many previous books

Side by Side -- Alice and Staughton Lynd, the Ohio Years by Mark W. Weber, Stephen H. Paschen, foreword by Carl Mirra, Kent State UPress '14 paperback, $29.95, 200 pages, ASIN #1606352237. Index, bibliography, notes, b&w images sprinkled through text.

From the back cover:

"Alice and Staughton Lynd have devoted their lives to the struggle for social justice. Carl Mirra began the history of the Lynds with his biography, Admirable Radical: Staughton Lynd and Cold War Dissent, 1945-1970 (Kent State UPress, 2010) Side by Side picks up the Lynds' story as they move to Youngstown, OH, to begin a new chapter in their lives.

"Throughout their narrative, authors Mark Weber and Stephen Paschen examine the idea of accompaniment, a form of political activism that differs from the traditional strategies used by labor and community organizers. Rather than moving from fight to fight, the Lynds lived within the community in need, helping steelworkers and residents cope with the devastating closures of the major steel mills in Youngstown and the Mahoning Valley.

"Working with clergy, labor, and civic leaders, Staughton Lynd advanced the idea of a worker-community-owned steel mill that would provide employment for some of the thousands of workers whose jobs had been lost. The dramatic if unsuccessful attempt to launch a cooperatively owned manufacturing enterprise was the first of a number of efforts by the Lynds to put their knowledge and experience at the service of those who have no voice."

About the authors:

"Mark W. Weber was the dean of Libraries at Kent State University until his retirement in 2010 and has worked with the Lynds since 1998. Stephen H. Paschen was associate professor and archivist at Kent State University Libraries until his retirement in 2013 and has written books on regional history."

FOCUS: From Across the Pond -- The Italians / Ostkrieg / An Irish-Speaking Island

The Italians by John Hooper, Viking Press '15, $28.95, 316 pages, ASIN #0525428070. Index, notes, b&w images sprinkled through text.

From the dust jacket:

"Just the mention of its name brings to mind sunny days and clear blue skies; delicious, comforting food; good-looking, well-dressed people; and museums crammed with the best Western Art.

"But what makes the Italians of today tick? And how did they come to be so endearingly idiosyncratic -- a people with 13 words for a coat hanger yet none for a hangover? Hooper's entertaining and perceptive new book is the ideal companion for anyone seeking to understand contemporary Italy and the unique character of the Italians.

"He offers insights into everything from their bewildering politics to their love of life and beauty. Each chapter covers an issue that affects ordinary Italians, including immigration and the influence of the Catholic Church, sex and the importance of family."

Author John Hooper is the Italy correspondent of The Economist and southern Europe editor of The Guardian and The Observer. He has also served as a foreign correspondent for the BBC, NBC, and Reuters.

Ostkrieg -- Hitler's War of Extermination in the East by Stephen G. Fritz, Kentucky UPress '15 paperback. $24.95, 688 pages, ASIN #0813161193. Index, bibliography, notes, appendix, grouping of b&w images.

 

"For decades after the end of World War II, much of our understanding of the German-Soviet war came from the German perspective, for the very good reason that only German documents and archives were readily available," writes author Stephen G. Fritz in his latest book. "Equivalent Soviet sources were either unavailable, marred by ideology, or limited in their circulation because of language problems.

"....German officers writing either on their own or under the auspices of the U.S. Army's historical project rather consciously sought to create an image of the Wehrmacht as professionally competent, technically proficient, and, above all, 'clean.'....Standard narratives of the Ostkrieg, the war in the east, available in English primarily focused very narrowly on the sweep of military events and ignored the intersection of the war and Hitler's overtly ideological, racial, and economic plans for the conquered eastern territories.

"Two things have combined to change this view, at least among professional historians. The first was the collapse of the Soviet Union some 20 years ago, which gave historians unprecedented access to formerly unavailable archival material.

"....At the same time, the massive 10-volume 'semiofficial' history of the war initiated some four decades ago by the Military History Research Office of the German Bendeswecht has not only exploded the myth of the clean Wehrmacht by showing its complicity in Nazi crimes in the east but has also integrated the separate 'wars' on the eastern front into the Vernichtungskrieg, or war of annihilation, originally envisioned by Hitler."

Author Stephen G. Fritz is professor of history at East Tennessee State University and the author of two previous books on World War II.

An Irish-Speaking Island -- State, Religion, Community, and the Linguistic Landscape in Ireland, 1770-1870 by Nicholas M. Wolf, UWisconsin Press '14 paperback, $24.95, 688 pages, ASIN #0299302741. Index, bibliography, notes, b&w images sprinkled through text.

From the back cover:

"After 1770, Ireland experienced the establishment of modern forms of Irish Catholicism, new engagement by the public with the political process, and the growth of the modern state, represented by new legal and educational systems. An Irish-Speaking Island investigates the role in these developments of the population who spoke Irish in their daily lives -- whether as a first or second language -- and links the history of language contact and bilingualism with the broader history of Ireland in the 18th and 19th centuries.

"As late as 1840, Ireland had as many as four million Irish speakers -- a significant proportion of the total population -- who could be found in every county of the island and in all social classes and religious persuasions. Their impact on the modern history of Ireland and the United Kingdom cannot be captured by a simple conclusion that they became anglicized.

"Rather, Nicholas M. Wolf explores the complex ways in which the transition from Irish to English placed a premium on adaptive bilingualism and shaped beliefs and behavior in the domestic sphere, religious life, and oral culture within the community. An Irish-Speaking Island will interest not only historians but also scholars of linguistics, folklore, politics, literature, and religion."

Author Nicholas M. Wolf is an assistant professor and faculty fellow at Glucksman Ireland House, New York University.

FOCUS: A Potpourri -- California Mennonites / Phantom Terror / Shaping Ceremony

California Mennonites by Brian Froese, Johns Hopkins UPress '15, stated First Printing. 334 pages, ASIN #1421415127. Index, bibliography, notes, b&w images sprinkled through text.

"In 1949 Carey McWilliams, the influential social commentator on California society, asked, "Is there really a state called California or is all this boastful talk?" writes historian Brian Froese in the Preface to his new book. "California was, in the mid-20th century, still defined by dreams of gold, movie magic, and endless sunshine. That the world moved in was testament to the drawing power of California as both a place and an exportable idea.

"McWilliams brought his perceptive eye to bear on the religious environment of Southern California by countering the romantic mythologies surrounding the Spanish Catholic missions and Aimee Semple McPherson, founder of the Foursquare Church. Though separated in time, that juxtaposition of images -- the mission of the old established church and the new religious movement -- has largely defined California religious hagiography.

"In the first half of the 20th century, thousands of Mennonites moved to California, joining the millions of people from all over America and the world making the same trip. Of course, there really was, and is, an American state called California. What millions of people found, however, were countless interpretations, understandings, and manifestations of what that state could be."

Author Brian Froese is an associate professor of history at Canadian Mennonite University in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

Phantom Terror -- Political Paranoia and the Creation of the Modern State, 1789--1848 by Adam Zamoyski, BasicBooks '15, $35, 569 pages, ASIN #0465039898. Index, sources, notes, unillustrated except for several maps.

 

From the dust jacket:

"For the ruling and propertied classes of the late 18th century, the years following the French Revolution were characterized by intense anxiety. Monarchs and their courtiers lived in constant fear of rebellion, convinced that their power -- and their heads -- were at risk. Driven by paranoia, they chose to fight back against every threat and insurgency, whether real or merely perceived, repressing their populaces through surveillance networks and violent, secretive police action. Europe, and the world, had entered a new era.

"In Phantom Terror, award-winning historian Adam Zamoyski argues that the stringent measures designed to prevent unrest had disastrous and far-reaching consequences, inciting the very rebellions they had hoped to quash. The newly established culture of state control halted economic development in Austria and birthed a rebellious youth culture in Russia that would require even harsher methods to suppress. By the end of the era, the first stirrings of terrorist movements had become evident across the continent, making the previously unfounded fears of European monarchs a reality."

Author Adam Zamoyski has written numerous books about Poland, Napoleon, and 19th century Europe. He lives in London.

Shaping Ceremony -- Monumental Steps and Greek Architecture by Mary B. Hollinshead, Wisconsin UPress '15, in oversized format on glossy stock, $50, 252 pages, ASIN #02993301109. Index, bibliography, notes, catalog of sites, appendix, scores of b&w images, some full page.

From the dust jacket:

"Offering a fresh approach to ancient Greek architecture, Shaping Ceremony focuses on the overlooked subject of monumental steps. Written in a clear and readable style, the book presents three complementary ways of studying steps: examining how the human body works on steps; theoretical perspectives on the relationship between architecture and human behavior; and the socio-political effects of steps' presence.

"Although broad steps are usually associated with emperors and political dominance, Mary B. Hollinshead argues that earlier, in Greek statuaries, they expressed and reinforced communal authority. From this alternate perspective, she expands the traditional intellectual framework for studying Greek architecture."

Author Mary B. Hollinshead is a professor of art history at the University of Rhode Island. She has excavated at sites in Italy, Cyprus, and Greece.

 

FOCUS: A Little of This, A Little of That -- Revolutionary Emancipation / Caribbean Crossing / The Nightingale / Half-Life

Revolutionary Emancipation -- Slavery and Abolitionism in the British West Indies by Claudius K. Fergus, Louisiana State UPress '13, $45, 271 pages, ASIN #0814764932. Index, bibliography, notes, unillustrated.

From the dust cover:

"Skillfully weaving an African worldview into the conventional historiography of British abolitionism, Claudius K. Fergus presents new insights into one of the most intriguing and momentous episodes of Atlantic history. In Revolutionary Emancipation, Fergus argues that the 1760 rebellion in Jamaica, Tacky's War -- largest and most destructive rebellion of enslaved peoples in the Americas prior to the Haitian Revolution -- provided the rationale for abolition and reform of the colonial system.

"Fergus shows that following Tacky's War, British colonies in the West Indies sought political preservation under state-regulated amelioration of slavery. He further contends that abolitionists' successes -- from partial to general prohibition of the slave trade -- hinged more on the economic benefits of creolizing slave labor and the costs of preserving the colonies from destructive emancipation rebellions than on a conviction of justice and humanity for Africans."

Author Claudius K. Fergus is a senior lecturer in the Department of History at the University of the West Indies at St. Augustine and visiting scholar at the University of Ghana, Legon.

Caribbean Crossing -- African Americans and the Haitian Emigration Movement by Sara Fanning, New York University Press '14, $35, 192 pages, ASIN #0814764932. Index, notes, unillustrated.

 

 From the back cover:

"Shortly after winning its independence in 1804, Haiti's leaders realized that if their nation were to survive, it needed to build strong diplomatic bonds with other nations. Haiti's first leaders looked especially hard at the United States, which had a sizeable free black population that included vocal champions of black emigration and colonization. In the 1820s, President Jean-Pierre Boyer helped facilitate a migration of thousands of black Americans to Haiti with promises of ample land, rich commercial prospects, and, most importantly, a black state.

"His ideas struck a chord with both blacks and whites in America. Journalists and black community leaders advertised emigration to Haiti as a way for African Americans to resist discrimination and show the world that the black race could be an equal on the world stage, while antislavery whites sought to support a nation founded by liberated slaves. Black and white businessmen were excited by trade potential, and racist whites viewed Haiti as a way to export the race problem that plagued America.

"By the end of the decade, black American migration to Haiti began to ebb as emigrants realized that the Caribbean republic wasn't the black Eden they'd anticipated. Caribbean Crossing documents the rise and fall of the campaign for black emigration to Haiti, drawing on a variety of archival sources to share the rich voices of the emigrants themselves. Using letters, diary accounts, travelers' reports, newspaper articles, and American, British, and French consulate records, Sara Fanning profiles the emigrants and analyzes the diverse motivations that fueled this unique early moment in both American and Haitian history."

Author Sara Fanning is Assistant Professor of History at Texas Woman's University.

The Nightingale -- A Novel by Kristin Hannah, St. Martin's Press '15, $27.99, 440 pages, ASIN #0312577222.

Those familiar with many of Kristin Hannah's previous 21 novels are likely to sense a departure in her new novel, The Nightingale. "While as carefully crafted as her other work, it is a more emotionally searing, often brutal story set in France during World War II. With life as they knew it utterly changed, two sisters -- one in Paris, the other in the French countryside -- find their moral and physical strength sorely tested.

"Isabelle joins the resistance and creates an escape route out of the Nazi-occupied territory for downed Allied airmen. Struggling in her impoverished village, Vianne tries to keep her small family alive, but is moved to acts of heroism that put her life and that of her child in grave danger.

"Hannah's research on WWII led her to stories of women who made impossible choices and risked their own families during that dark time in history. This became the central question she asks in this haunting novel: When does one risk their lives and their child's lives to save a stranger?"

Author Kristin Hannah is the New York Times bestselling author of 21 novels. A former lawyer turned writer, she is the mother of one son and lives with her husband in the Pacific Northwest and Hawaii.

Half-Life -- The Divided Life of Bruno Pontecorvo, Physicist or Spy by Frank Close, BasicBooks '15, stated First Printing. $29.99, 378 pages, ASIN #0465069983. Index, bibliography, notes, b&w images sprinkled through text.

From the dust jacket:

"It was at the height of the Cold War, in the summer of 1950, when Bruno Pontecorvo mysteriously vanished behind the Iron Curtain. Who was he, and what caused him to disappear? Was he simply a physicist, or also a spy and communist radical?

"A protege' of Enrico Fermi, Pontecorvo was one of the most promising nuclear physicists in the world. He spent years hunting for the Higgs bosom of his day -- the neutrino -- a nearly massless particle thought to be essential to the process of particle decay. His work on the Manhattan Project helped to usher in the nuclear age, and confirmed his reputation as a brilliant physicist. Why, then, would he disappear as he stood on the cusp of true greatness, perhaps even the Nobel Prize?"

Author Frank Close is a professor of physics at the University of Oxford, a longtime science writer, and author of many books. He lives in Abingdon, England.

FOCUS: A Potpourri -- Burning Down the House / The Promise and Perils of Populism / Bloody Ridge and Beyond

Burning Down the House -- The End of Juvenile Prison by Nell Bernstein, The New Press '15, $26.95, 365 pages, ASIN #1595589562. Index, unillustrated.

"When teenagers scuffle on the basketball court, they are typically benched for the game," writes author Nell Bernstein in her new book. "But when Brian got into it on the court inside a juvenile prison, he was sprayed in the face with a chemical fogger, denied a shower, and then locked in solitary for a month.

"One in three American schoolchildren will be arrested by the time they are 23, many of them for so-called status offenses -- including cutting school, drinking alcohol, or disrespecting a policeman -- that are not crimes for adults. Despite recent reforms, too many youths will land in horrific state detention facilities where children as young as 12 are preyed upon by guards; driven mad by months in solitary; and, in their own words, 'treated like animals.'

"Beyond these abuses, the very act of isolating children in punitive prisons denies delinquent youth the one thing essential to rehabilitation: positive relationships with caring adults. In this clear-eyed indictment of a failed institution -- the juvenile detention facility -- award-winning journalist Nell Bernstein shows that there is no right way to lock up a child."

Author Nell Bernstein's All Alone in the World was a Newsweek "Book of the Week." Her articles have appeared in leading magazines and newspapers. She lives outside of Berkeley, CA.

The Promise and Perils of Populism -- Global Perspectives, Edited by Carlos de la Torre, Kentucky UPress '15 paperback. $30, 452 pages, ASIN #0813153301. Index, contributing essayists, notes follow each essay, unillustrated.

From the back cover:

"From the protesters in Cairo's Tahrir's Square to the Tea Party in the United States to the campaign to elect indigenous leader Evo Morales in Bolivia, modern populist movements command international attention and compel political and social change. In The Promise and Perils of Populism, Carlos de la Torre assembles a group of international scholars to explore the ambiguous meanings and profound implications of populist movements across the globe.

"These trenchant essays explore how fragile political institutions allow populists to achieve power, while strong, well-functioning institutions confine grassroots movements to the margins of political systems. Their comparative case studies illuminate how Latin American, African, and Thai populists have sought to empower marginalized groups of people while similar groups in Australia, Europe, and the United States often exclude people whom they consider to possess different cultural values.

"This study of contemporary populism from a comparative perspective could not be more timely, and scholars from a variety of disciplines will find it an invaluable contribution to the literature."

Author Carlos de la Torre is director of international studies and professor of sociology at the University of Kentucky.

Bloody Ridge and Beyond -- A World War II Marine's Memoir of Edson's Raiders in the Pacific by Marlin 'Whitey' Groft and Larry Alexander, Berkley Caliber '14, $26.95, 348 pages, ASIN #0425273008. Index, notes, grouping of b&w glossy images.

Following is a brief excerpt of the book's Introduction by author Larry Alexander:

"In my 20-plus years of being a journalist, I have had the distinct honor of interviewing combat veterans from every American war of the 20th century, from World War I through Iraq. In each instance, I have found their valor, courage, and willingness to put themselves in harm's way for their nation to be inspiring. In a few cases, most particularly Major Richard D. Winters and Sergeant Forrest Guth, both with the famed 'Band of Brothers,' they became friends.

"The same can be said for Marlin F. 'Whitey' Groft.

"I met Marlin in 2009 when I was looking for a veteran on whom to write a newspaper story to run on Veterans Day. I knew Whitey had been a Marine during the war, and that he had served on Guadalcanal. I did not know until I began the interview that he had been a member of one of the Marine Corps's most famous World War II fighting organizations, Edson's Raiders."

Author Martin F. Groft, born in Lebanon, PA, spent his career as a silk-screen printer in a textile factory. During World War II, he volunteered for the 1st Marine Raider Battalion under Lt. Col. Merritt A. Edson and later served with the 6th Marine Division, seeing duty in China until the end of 1945. Author Larry Alexander is the author of the New York Times best-selling biography Biggest Brother: The Life of Major Dick Winters, the Man Who Led the Band of Brothers. He has authored or co-authored other books as well.

 

FOCUS: American History -- Founding Visions / A Great Conspiracy Against Our Race / The Celtic Myths

Founding Visions -- The Ideas, Individuals, and Intersections That Created America, Edited and with an Introduction by Todd Estes, foreword by Gordon S. Wood, UKentucky Press '14, $45, 372 pages, ASIN #0813152844. Index, bibliography, appendix, notes follow each chapter, unillustrated.

"Lance Banning was one of the best historians of his generation," writes historian Todd Estes in the Introduction to this book. "He was also one of the most modest and self-effacing, which is why this book of his collected essays is only now in your hands. This introduction will deal briefly with his modesty and narrate how the collection finally came into being many years after its conception.

"But its primary purpose is to establish Banning's significance as a historian of early America and to elucidate the ways that his body of work -- much of it collected in these pages -- served to reshape the historiographical landscape by challenging the received wisdom, offering bold new interpretations, refereeing disputes and controversies among specialists, and doing all of it with a remarkable fairness and evenhandedness that was at least as prominent as his modesty and certainly more important.

"Above all else, Banning was absolutely dedicated to doing history as carefully and meticulously as possible. He believed the most important thing was to get it right, to do history with a thoroughness and dedication to accuracy and fairness. He believed we historians owed that to our discipline and to the past."

Author Lance Banning (1942-2006) taught at Brown University and the University of Kentucky and held a senior Fulbright appointment at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands in 1997. Todd Estes is associate professor of history at Oakland University and has written numerous works in the historical field.

A Great Conspiracy Against Our Race -- Italian Immigrant Newspapers and the Construction of Whiteness in the Early 20th Century by Peter G. Vellon, New York UPress '14, $45, 192 pages, ASIN #0814788483. Illustrated, laminated boards perfect. Index, notes, b&w images sprinkled through text.

From the back cover:

"America has always struggled with race, perpetrating a raft of injustices against black people. This history is complicated by, and also dependent on, our shifting definition of 'whiteness.' Many of the European immigrant groups now considered white have also had to struggle with their own racial consciousness.

"In A Great Conspiracy Against Our Race, author Peter G. Vellon explores how Italian immigrants, a once-undesirable and 'swarthy' race, assimilated into dominant white culture through the influential national and radical Italian language press in New York City. Examining the press as a cultural production of the Italian immigrant community, this book investigates how this immigrant press constructed race, class and identity from 1886 through 1920. Its frequent coverage of racially charged events of the time, as well as other topics such as capitalism and religion, reveals how these papers constructed a racial identity as Italian, American, and white.

"A Great Conspiracy Against Our Race vividly illustrates how the immigrant press was a site where socially constructed categories of race, color, civilization, and identity were reworked, created, contested, and negotiated. Vellon also uncovers how Italian immigrants filtered societal pressures and redefined the parameters of whiteness, constructing their own identity. This work is an important contribution not only to Italian American history, but also to America's history of immigration and race."

Author Peter G. Vellon is Associate Professor of History at Queens College.

The Celtic Myths -- A Guide to the Ancient Gods and Legends by Miranda Aldhouse-Green, Thames & Hudson '15, $24.95, 208 pages, ASIN 0500252092. Index, sources of quotations, notes, b&w images sprinkled through text.

 

"Celtic myth has long fascinated readers with its magical creatures, heroic warriors and romantic tales," writes author/archaeologist Miranda Aldhouse-Green in her latest book. "First written down in medieval Wales and Ireland, the legends derive from oral poetry composed many centuries earlier. The Celts who shared these myths left behind treasures and monuments that predate the written texts but are closely connected with them.....

"In these pages you will meet the supernatural cast of Celtic lore: the Irish warrior, Cu Chulainn, whose prodigious strength as a child foreshadowed his heroic life; the Welsh lovers Culhwch and Olwen whose long and happy marriage was won only by Culhwch's Herculean feats; the tragic Lleu who was betrayed by his wife and lover; and King Arthur and his Knights' quest for the Holy Grail."

Author Miranda Aldhouse-Green is professor emeritus at Cardiff University. She specializes in the study of shamanism and archaeology of the Iron Age and has published widely on the Celts and their world.

FOCUS: American History -- True Yankees / Boom Towns / The Cause of All Nations

True Yankees by Dane A. Morrison, Johns Hopkins UPress '14, $34.95, 257 pages, ASIN #1421415429. Index, notes, b&w images sprinkled through text.

From the dustcover:

"With American independence came the freedom to sail anywhere in the world under a new flag. During the years between the Treaty of Paris and the Treaty of Wangxi, Americans first voyaged past the Cape of Good Hope, reaching the ports of Algiers and the bazaars of Arabia, the markets of India and the beaches of Sumatra, the villages of Cochin, China, and the factories of Canton. Their South Seas voyages of commerce and discovery introduced the infant nation to the world and the world to what the Chinese, Turks, and others dubbed the 'new people.'

"Drawing on private journals, letters, ships' logs, memoirs, and newspaper accounts, True Yankees traces America's earliest encounters on a global stage through the exhilarating experiences of five Yankee seafarers. Merchant Samuel Shaw spent a decade scouring the marts of China and India for goods that would captivate the imaginations of his countrymen. Mariner Amasa Delano toured much of the Pacific hunting seals. Explorer Edmund Fanning circumnavigated the globe, touching at various Pacific and Indian Ocean ports of call.

"In 1829, 20-year-old Harriet Low reluctantly accompanied her merchant uncle and ailing aunt to Macao, where she recorded trenchant observations of expatriate life. And sea captain Robert Bennet Forbes's last sojourn in Canton coincided with the eruption of the First Opium War."

Author Dane A. Morrison is a professor of early American history at Salem State University. He is the author of A Praying People: Massachusetts Acculturation and the Failure of the Puritan Mission, 1600--1690 and co-editor of two other works.

Boom Towns -- Restoring the Urban American Dream by Stephen J.K. Walters, Stanford Economics and Finance '14, 210 pages, ASIN #080478163X. Index, notes, occasional b&w images sprinkled through text.

"Dan Gilbert is not just a cockeyed optimist. He's a cockeyed optimist with a mission and a wide-open checkbook," writes economist Stephen J.K. Walters in this deeply engaging book.

"Because he's trying to rescue his hometown of Detroit -- America's poorest, most crime-ridden, depopulated big city -- press accounts of Gilbert's efforts thus far have been admiring but skeptical. Adjectives such as 'altruistic' or 'quixotic' keep popping up in these stories. Between the lines, reporters seem to be saying, 'This guy might be a hero, or he might be nuts. But at least he's risking his own dough.

"Lots of it. Since 2010, Gilbert, the founder of mortgage giant Quicken Loans, has moved 10,000 of his employees from the suburbs to downtown Detroit, invested over $1 billion to buy and rehab three million square feet of city property, bankrolled dozens of tiny startups, and coaxed famous-brand retailers into long-vacant buildings with dirt-cheap rents. His 'Opportunity Detroit' program may be the ambitious privately financed urban renewal effort in U.S. history."

Author Stephen J.K. Walters is Professor of Economics at Loyola University Maryland and Fellow at the Johns Hopkins Institute for Applied Economics, Global Health, and the Study of Business Enterprise.

The Cause of All Nations -- An International History of the American Civil War by Don H. Doyle, BasicBooks '15, $29.99, 382 pages, ASIN #0465029671. Index, notes, b&w images sprinkled through text.

In a brief Q&A, author Don Doyle discusses the writing of his thought-provoking new work:

Q. Most of us think of America's Civil War as a purely domestic conflict; what does the "international history" of this war entail?

A. There was a hard-fought diplomatic duel over international recognition of the rebel South, and had the South won this duel, the game might have been over long before it was decided by the sword. The U.S. debacle also reopened the door to European adventures in Mexico and elsewhere, so the repercussions of our domestic conflict went far beyond our borders. The world would not have looked the same had things gone differently in this war.

Q. What role did Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation play in this overseas battle for support?

A. The proclamation arrived in October 1862 just as government leaders in Britain and France were secretly plotting to intervene and end the war on terms of separation. Some of them claimed that emancipation would ignite racial holocaust and economic catastrophe in Europe. With the foreign public, however, the proclamation tilted the game in favor of the Union. Now foreign intervention was tantamount to rescuing slavery.

Author Don H. Doyle is Professor of History at the University of South Carolina and has written several previous books. He lives in Columbia, S.C.

FOCUS: A Potpourri -- The Antibiotic Era / Mr Mac and Me / Alfred Russel Wallace

The Antibiotic Era by Scott H. Podolsky, Johns Hopkins UPress '14, $34.95, 328 pages, ASIN #1421415933. 

  "This sweeping chronicle reveals the struggles faced by crusading reformers from the 1940s onward as they advocated for a rational therapeutics at the crowded intersection of bugs and drugs, patients and doctors, industry and medical academia, and government and the media," writes Scott H. Podolsky in his latest work.

"'During the 'wonder drug' revolution that followed World War II, antibiotics were viewed as a panacea for mastering infectious disease. But from the beginning, critics raised concerns about irrational usage and overprescription. The first generation of antibiotic reformers focused on regulating the drug industry.

"The reforms they set in motion included adopting controlled clinical trials as the ultimate arbiters of therapeutic efficacy, passage of the Kefauver--Harris amendments mandating proof of drug efficacy via well-controlled studies, and empowering the Food and Drug Administration to remove inefficacious drugs from the market. Despite such victories, no entity was authorized to rein in physicians who inappropriately prescribed or overly prescribed approved drugs."

Author Scott H. Podolsky is an internist at Massachusetts General Hospital, an associate professor of global health and social medicine at Harvard Medical School, and the director of the Center for the History of Medicine at the Francis A. Courtway Library of Medicine.

Mr. Mac and Me -- A Novel -- by Esther Freud, Bloomsbury '14, $26, 296 pages, ASIN #162040883X.

  

A brief excerpt from the author's latest novel:

"I was born upstairs in the small bedroom, not in the smallest room with the outshot window, where I sleep now, or the main room that is kept for guests -- summer visitors who write and let us know that they are coming and how long they plan to stay.

"Sometimes, after a night's drinking, folk may rest there, although Mother always takes their money off them first. If she doesn't they wake up and protest they don't know how they came to be lying in that fine wide bed, say they've been apprehended and held there, in comfort against their will.

"But that is at harvest time, when men and boys come to wash away the wheat chaff tickling their throats, or in high summer when they've spent the day thinning out the wild oats from hay. But I was born in winter, the sea storming on the beach beyond, roaring through the night, louder than my mother, whose ninth child I was."

Author Esther Freud, who has written seven previous novels, trained as an actress before writing her first novel, Hideous Kinky. She was named one of Granta's Best Young British Novelists in 1993. She lives in London and Suffolk. 

Alfred Russel Wallace -- Letters from the Malay Archipelago, Edited by John Van Wyhe and Kees Rookmaaker. Oxford UPress '13, $29.95, 319 pages, ASIN #0199683999.  Index, bibliography, appendices, footnotes, grouping of color glossy images, b&w images sprinkled through text.

From the back cover of the dust jacket:

"So begins the first letter from Alfred Russel Wallace, written as he crossed the Mediterranean on his way to Singapore on what would prove to be a momentous journey both for Wallace and for science. It was during this journey that Wallace would come to recognize the principle of natural selection.

"His famous letter to Darwin that prompted the rapid transcription of The Origin of Species is lost. But collected here in a new transcription are the surviving letters from that journey, both written to and by this quintessential Victorian naturalist and traveler. Wallace's exchanges with family, friends, and naturalist colleagues including Darwin, Bates, and Hooker, give us a vivid picture of the excitement and frustrations of his journey, and a Victorian world at the inception of a revolution in science."

About the Editors:

John Van Wyhe is a historian of science, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Biological Sciences & History, and a Fellow of Tembusu College at the National University of Singapore. Kees Rookmaaker is a biologist specializing in the history of zoology.

FOCUS: A Little of This, A Little of That -- The Young T.E. Lawrence / The Wars of the Roses / Far as the Eye Can See

 

The Young T.E. Lawrence by Anthony Sattin, Norton '15, $28.95, 316 pages, ASIN #0393242668. Index, bibliography, notes, two groupings of b&w glossy images.

"A young man crouches beside a fireplace and strikes a match," writes author Anthony Sattin in the Prologue of his latest book. "He is in the sitting room of a bungalow at the end of a garden, separated from the main house by a lawn, roses, perhaps also hollyhocks. The solid redbrick house, his family home, sits on a road just north of the centre of Oxford and could stand as a monument to Englishness. Identical to other Victorian houses in the area, it is almost anonymous.

"The bungalow, which has been purpose-built for the second of the family's five sons, has a small bedroom, electricity, running water and, something of a novelty, a direct telephone line to the main house. The walls are hung with fine green cotton to encourage calm and there is a fireplace for warmth. But it is August, the summer has been good and the weather bright, so there is no need for heating and yet the young man holds the match to papers piled in the grate.

"The man is T.E. Lawrence -- Thomas on his birth certificate, Edward to outsiders, Ned to his family, T.E. to some of his friends, El Aurens to his Arab companions. He has just celebrated his 26th birthday and war has been declared. The bungalow is his retreat, commissioned while he was studying history at the nearby university and when he needed some personal space. For the past four years, however, he has been an infrequent visitor, passing through in the summer on one occasion, causing a stir when he arrived with two Arab friends.

"For most of those years, he has been travelling and living in an area marked on his map -- and he has become an expert on this region -- as 'Northern Arabia', an area that includes the countries we know as Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, Jordan, and Egypt. Northern Arabia, divided into the Ottoman vilayets or provinces of Syria, Palestine, Mesopotamia and Egypt, is the setting for the story that is to unfold."

Author Anthony Sattin has written several acclaimed history and travel books and lives in London.

The Wars of the Roses -- The Fall of the Plantagenets and the Rise of the Tudors by Dan Jones, Viking Press '14, stated First Printing. Brand new, never read, no clips or marks. DJ perfect. No sales final.

"The crown of England changed hands five times over the course of the 15th century as warring branches of the Plantagenet dynasty fought to the death for the right to rule. In this riveting follow-up to The Plantagenets, Dan Jones describes how the longest reigning British royal family tore itself apart in a brutal blood fued and succumbed to the unlikely Tudors.

"Some of the great heroes and villains of history were thrown together in these turbulent times, from Henry V, whose victory at Agincourt and prudent rule marked the high point of the medieval monarchy, to Richard III, who murdered his own nephews in a desperate bid to secure his stolen crown.

"Treachery and intrigue ruled the land. While Richard duke of York, Warwick the Kingmaker, and Edward IV rounded up armies and sent those who betrayed them to the scaffold, Catherine of Valois, Margaret of Anjou and the beautiful twice-married Elizabeth Woodville secretly schemed to secure the throne for their progeny."

Author Dan Jones is an award-winning historian of the Middle Ages. He is turning The Plantagenets: The Warrior Kings and Queens Who Made England, into a four-part TV series due to be released in 2015. He is currently working on a book on 1215, the year of the Magna Carta. He lives with his wife and two daughters in London.

Far as the Eye Can See -- A Novel -- by Robert Bausch, Bloomsbury '14, stated First U.S. Edition, First Printing. Brand new, never read, no clips or marks. DJ perfect. No sales final.

"From a break in the rocks where I stand, the country is as big as any whole earth I ever dreamed of," writes Pulitzer Prize double nominee Robert Bausch in his latest novel. "When you're heading west, into this country, you don't get a sense of its size because you don't know where it ends. It's open and wide, of course, but you got this notion of finding the other side of it. Once you been here, and the years pass, you get used to it -- to spaces surrounded by blue mountains that pile so high, you can't believe a man can walk in them. So when you find yourself feeling like you ought to skedaddle out of it as soon and fast as you can, it hits you how endless and gigantic it is.

"And I feel if I don't get out, I might get killed by either the army or the Indians. It may be both species of animal is after me. Until a few days ago, I was scouting for General Gibbon, coming from Fort Ellis in Bozeman, Montana Territory. He told me that soon Custer will come from the east and Reno from the south and we would settle the Indian question once and for all. But then I done something just by accident really and now I'm trying my damnedest to avoid Indians and Cavalry alike."

Robert Bausch has written seven novels and a collection of stories. They include Almighty Me! (adapted for film as Bruce Almighty). Educated at George Mason University, he currently teaches at Northern Virginia Community College. He lives in Virginia.