Living History

FINALIST FOR THE 2016 PULITZER PRIZE IN HISTORY.

From the publisher: A groundbreaking investigation examining the fate of Union veterans who won the war but couldn’t bear the peace.

For well over a century, traditional Civil War histories have concluded in 1865, with a bitterly won peace and Union soldiers returning triumphantly home. In a landmark work that challenges sterilized portraits accepted for generations, Civil War historian Brian Matthew Jordan creates an entirely new narrative. These veterans― tending rotting wounds, battling alcoholism, campaigning for paltry pensions― tragically realized that they stood as unwelcome reminders to a new America eager to heal, forget, and embrace the freewheeling bounty of the Gilded Age. Mining previously untapped archives, Jordan uncovers anguished letters and diaries, essays by amputees, and gruesome medical reports, all deeply revealing of the American psyche.

In the model of twenty-first-century histories like Drew Gilpin Faust’s This Republic of Suffering or Maya Jasanoff ’s Liberty’s Exiles that illuminate the plight of the common man, Marching Home makes almost unbearably personal the rage and regret of Union veterans. Their untold stories are critically relevant today.

Geographical Knowledge and Imperial Culture in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire
By Pinar Emiralioglu

From the publisher: Exploring the reasons for a flurry of geographical works in the Ottoman Empire in the sixteenth century, this study analyzes how cartographers, travellers, astrologers, historians and naval captains promoted their vision of the world and the centrality of the Ottoman Empire in it. It proposes a new case study for the interconnections among empires in the period, demonstrating how the Ottoman Empire shared political, cultural, economic, and even religious conceptual frameworks with contemporary and previous world empires.

http://www.ashgate.com/default.aspx?page=637&calcTitle=1&isbn=9781472415332&lang=cy-GB

The Enemy Within Never Did Without: German and Japanese Prisoners of War at Camp Huntsville, 1942-1945.
Edited by Jeffrey L. Littlejohn and Charles H. Ford

From the publisher: Between 1943 and 1945, Camp Huntsville housed roughly 4,700 German POWs and experienced tense relations between incarcerated Nazi and anti-Nazi factions. Then, during the last months of the war, the American military selected Camp Huntsville as the home of its top-secret re-education program for Japanese POWs.

The irony of teaching Japanese prisoners about democracy and voting rights was not lost on African Americans in East Texas who faced disenfranchisement and racial segregation. Nevertheless, the camp did inspire some Japanese prisoners to support democratization of their home country when they returned to Japan after the war. Meanwhile, in this country, the US government sold Camp Huntsville to Sam Houston State Teachers College in 1946, and the site served as the school’s Country Campus through the mid-1950s.

http://www.tamupress.com/product/Enemy-Within-Never-Did-Without,8111.aspx

A People's War On Poverty: Urban Politics and Grassroots Activists in Houston
By Wesley G. Phelps

From the publisher: In A People’s War on Poverty, Wesley G. Phelps investigates the on-the-ground implementation of President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty during the 1960s and 1970s. He argues that the fluid interaction between federal policies, urban politics, and grassroots activists created a significant site of conflict over the meaning of American democracy and the rights of citizenship that historians have largely overlooked. In Houston in particular, the War on Poverty spawned fierce political battles that revealed fundamental disagreements over what democracy meant, how far it should extend, and who should benefit from it. Many of the program’s implementers took seriously the federal mandate to empower the poor as they pushed for a more participatory form of democracy that would include more citizens in the political, cultural, and economic life of the city.

http://www.ugapress.org/index.php/books/peoples_war_on_poverty/

The Encyclopedia of the Industrial Revolution in World History: 3 vols.
Edited by Kenneth E. Hendrickson III

From the publisher: The Encyclopedia of the Industrial Revolution in World History is a three-volume work of over 1,000 entries on the rise and spread of the Industrial Revolution across the world. Entries comprise accessible but scholarly explorations of topics from the “aerospace industry” to “zaibatsu.” Contributor articles not only address topics of technology and technical innovation but emphasize the individual human and social experience of industrialization. Entries include generous selections of biographical figures and human communities, with articles on entrepreneurs, working men and women, families, and organizations. They also cover legal developments, disasters, and the environmental impact of the Industrial Revolution. Each entry also includes cross-references and a brief list of suggested readings to alert readers to more detailed information.

https://rowman.com/ISBN/9780810888876/The-Encyclopedia-of-the-Industrial-Revolution-in-World-History-3-Volumes#

The Other Great Migration: The Movement of Rural African Americans to Houston, 1900-1941
By Bernadette Pruitt, PhD

From the publisher: The twentieth century has seen two great waves of African American migration from rural areas into the city, changing not only the country’s demographics but also black culture. In her thorough study of migration to Houston, Bernadette Pruitt portrays the move from rural to urban homes in Jim Crow Houston as a form of black activism and resistance to racism.

Between 1900 and 1950 nearly fifty thousand blacks left their rural communities and small towns in Texas and Louisiana for Houston. Jim Crow proscription, disfranchisement, acts of violence and brutality, and rural poverty pushed them from their homes; the lure of social advancement and prosperity based on urban-industrial development drew them. Houston’s close proximity to basic minerals, innovations in transportation, increased trade, augmented economic revenue, and industrial development prompted white families, commercial businesses, and industries near the Houston Ship Channel to recruit blacks and other immigrants to the city as domestic laborers and wage earners.

http://www.tamupress.com/product/Other-Great-Migration,7543.aspx

The Myth of the Press Gang: Volunteers, Impressment and the Naval Manpower Problem in the Late Eighteenth Century
By J. Ross Dancy

From the publisher: The press gang is generally regarded as the means by which the British navy solved the problem of recruiting enough seamen in the late eighteenth century. This book, however, based on extensive original research conducted primarily in a large number of ships' muster books, demonstrates that this view is false. It argues that, in fact, the overwhelming majority of seamen in the navy were there of their own free will. Taking a long view across the late eighteenth century but concentrating on the period of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars of 1793-1815, the book provides great detail on the sort of men that were recruited and the means by which they were recruited, and includes a number of individuals' stories. It shows how manpower was a major concern for the Admiralty; how the Admiralty put in place a range of recruitment methods including the quota system; how it worried about depleting merchant shipping of sufficient sailors; and how, although most seamen were volunteers, the press gang was resorted to, especially during the initial mobilisation at the beginning of wars and to find certain kinds of particularly skilled seamen.

http://www.boydellandbrewer.com/store/viewItem.asp?idProduct=14694

The Pillars of Reaganomics: A Generation of Wisdom from Arthur Laffer and the Supply Side Revolutions
Edited By Brian Domitrovic, PhD

From the publisher: “’Supply-side economics’ – a combination of tax cuts and a commitment to a strong and stable dollar – sustained an economic renaissance that only ended with the Keynesian resurgence in 2008,” said Dr. Domitrovic. “Remarkably, little of the written output of the giants of the supply-side revolution has been made available to wide audiences. This book is a collection of ten of the greatest hits of Laffer Associates.” The issues range from policy recommendations to overcome economic stagnation through tax cuts and a stable value of money; addressing economic inequality; and achieving social security solvency through economic growth – many of the same issues the U.S. faces today. “This book is a record of the last generation’s ideas for solving these problems — a manual for how to get out of our economic funk today. We hope that the next Congress will take advantage of this book to guide them in policymaking.”

http://www.laffercenter.com/pillars-reaganomics-amazon-com/