Promotions - Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles 2016 -

Veteran journalist and National Public Radio correspondent Gjelten applies an in-depth, contextual understanding to offer a stunningly researched, analyzed, and narrated presentation of US immigration history, centered on the pivotal 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act. While providing key historical and national context, he points his lens to northern Virginia, which is both unique and characteristic in its manifestation of the issues and great diversity resulting from the 1965 legislation. Gjelten presents the stories of immigrants from El Salvador, Bolivia, Libya, and Korea, gathered through in-depth interviews and research, to make the case for what immigration means today and will mean in the future. He also conducted research to address how existing communities--for example, African American communities in Fairfax County, Virginia--engaged with and were affected by the arrival of post-1965 immigrant populations. Gjelten's chronicles of immigrant life experiences provide qualitative "evidence"--embedded in stories of separation, hardship, a willingness to work hard, and an unwavering determination to succeed--that hopefully will inform future public debates and legislation. An important resource for anyone seeking to better understand US society and the role of immigration in the country's past, present, and future.Summing Up: Essential. All levels/libraries.

Prolific early American historian Kidd (Baylor Univ.) provides readers with another excellent book. Synthesizing leading scholarship and marshaling a wide range of primary sources, Kidd makes the bold claim that the driving forces throughout Colonial American history were religion and conflict. He successfully traces these intertwining themes from contact to the cusp of the American Revolution, showing their significance to the many cultures central to the intricate story of Colonial America. However, Kidd offers more than a convincing narrative. Each chapter includes a great selection of primary source excerpts that afford readers the opportunity to engage early Americans on their own terms. Combining these elements works well, as the more intimate interaction of the primary document provides a nice counterpoint to the more broadly focused narrative. Kidd has arguably written the best single volume introduction to Colonial American history. From beginning to end, a thoughtful, thorough, transfixing book.Summing Up: Essential. All public, undergraduate, and graduate collections.

Vividly written, this exhaustively researched, abundantly illustrated and mapped, 362-page narrative in nine chapters, which includes 200 additional pages in eight appendixes and an extensive bibliography and index, will become the standard study of the near-extermination of California's Indians, 1864-73. Records of fears of attacks, greed for California's resources, racism, and a desire for cheap forced labor reveal an awakened vigilantism that matured into formal state and federal policy and gruesome action, leading Madley (UCLA) to conclude that treatment of California's Indians was genocide. This grim book treats every known hostile encounter, participant, and relevant politico-legal event and expression of public opinion. Lavish prepublication praise avoids several issues. It is not news that US Indian policy was "extermination." The use of the term "genocide" draws a distinction without a difference, and makes it banal. Furthermore, it implies that morality is quantitative, not qualitative. Morally, intentionally murdering many is no more wrong than killing one. The nature of an act, not the number of victims, determines morality. Finally, introducing terms such as "killing machine" and "genocide studies" smacks of projecting "political correctness" (in this case "historical correctness?").Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels/libraries.

Anthropological and archaeological tradition has long held that the introduction of measles, smallpox, and other infectious diseases by European colonization led to a massive depopulation of North America. If various studies were to be believed (and they were), then such diseases could have wiped out up to 90 percent of the Indigenous North American population. These studies, however, were difficult to align with the ethnographic and archaeological evidence, once scholars began to carefully examine it. Tradition began to erode as evidence surfaced that, for example, North American populations had long histories of diseases that had nothing to do with European contact. This book is an excellent addition to a growing literature that challenges the "virgin soil" hypothesis and shows its wide exaggeration. In its place, the authors construct a well-built scaffold that includes warfare, enslavement, erasure of identity, expropriation of land, and other processes in addition to disease that contributed to the depopulation of Indigenous peoples. Readers at any level will understand the arguments presented. The chapters are short, well written, and chock-full of useful reference for those wanting more information. An excellent book.Summing Up: Essential. All levels/libraries.

The tragic feud between Elijah Muhammad (a messenger of Allah and leader of the Nation of Islam) and Malcolm X is critically important in the black freedom struggle in the 1960s. Historians Roberts (Purdue) and Smith (Georgia Tech) offer a fresh perspective on the friendship between Malcolm X and Cassius Clay and Malcolm's role in Clay's embrace of the Nation of Islam. They chronicle the tug of war between Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X for the loyalty of the boxer who became Muhammad Ali (the name given to him by Elijah Muhammad) in March 1964. Some readers may be uncomfortable with the elements of conjecture and speculation about the motives of the principals in this story and the dark side of the feud between Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X, with Muhammad Ali caught in the middle and forced to choose sides. Nevertheless, the book offers a plausible, sobering account and shines a light on the complex relationship between Malcolm and Ali. The authors ask probing questions about Malcolm's assassination and the possibility that the FBI had an informant and collaborator very high up in the inner circle of Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam. A great companion withMalcolm X: A Life of Reinvention (CH, Sep'11, 49-0485), by Manning Marable. Indispensable reading.Summing Up: Essential. All levels/libraries.

The late Caroline Cox (formerly, Univ. of the Pacific; d. 2014) has written a deeply researched volume on a nearly impossible subject: why boys younger than 15, constituting anywhere from 2.4 to 11 percent of enlistments, joined the Continental army and what happened to them afterward. Using hundreds of veterans' pension applications as her core primary source, supplemented by the few surviving letters, court records, and civilian and military memoirs, Cox carefully and imaginatively re-creates the lives and feelings of these boy soldiers. She finds that they enlisted for diverse reasons. Some were "pulled" into the army by patriotism, the excitement of war, a desire to emulate their fathers, or to achieve Christian manhood. Others were "pushed" into the army by the instability of the times and tensions within their families, the military offering the possibility of stability. Although lacking in physical strength, boy soldiers did everything older soldiers did. They guarded coastlines and prisoners, dug latrines, foraged for food, tended to the wounded, spied on enemies, carried messages, and fought. This exemplary volume is required reading for anyone interested in the history of childhood and the American Revolutionary War.Summing Up: Essential. All levels/libraries.

The dull title of this engaging book does not do it justice. Benowitz (Univ. of South Florida Sarasota-Manatee) writes a clear account of national right-wing women activists between 1950 and the mid-1970s. In their roles as mothers, rightists perceived a responsibility to defeat any threats to their children. These women, often racist and anti-Semitic, saw communists at the heart of demands for school integration, mental health reform, sex education, and polio vaccination. Rightist women also viewed the government and progressive educators, as well as scientific and intellectual elites, as part of a broad conspiracy to undermine their vision of a utopian United States. Benowitz argues that these women set the stage for the rise of the New Right and the Tea Party. The scope of the book is impressive. The author covers every major rightist issue, including the Vietnam War and the Equal Rights Amendment, and shows command of the secondary literature. The historical context to such controversies as the fluoridation of public water will be very useful to readers.Summing Up: Highly recommended. General collections, and upper-division undergraduates and above.

In thirty-some years of reviewing books, this reviewer has never been assigned a boring book. Some have been disappointing. Most have made a scholarly contribution. An elite group has made a lasting impression.Daisy Turner's Kin joins that elite group. The narrative centers on Alexander "Alec" Turner. Born enslaved in Tidewater Virginia, Turner achieved freedom during the Civil War and served with the First New Jersey Calvary. Within ten years, Turner and his young wife were in Grafton, Vermont, steadily gaining their neighbors' admiration through tireless work to build a farmstead while rearing a large family. An accomplished storyteller, Turner regularly used that talent to transmit his heritage to subsequent generations. Alec died in 1923, but the heritage-based storytelling continued through his daughter Daisy until her death in 1988. In the mid-1980s, Beck, the founding director of the Vermont Folklife Center, recorded Daisy's storytelling. Through painstaking research, Beck subsequently constructed context that enhances this magnificent family heritage. Her sophisticated analysis is similar to what Laurel Thatcher Ulrich achieved with Martha Ballard's diary inA Midwife's Tale (1990). This book belongs in every academic and public library.Summing Up: Essential. All levels/libraries.

Food is not an afterthought but central to the story of race in the US, and this volume demonstrates a myriad of approaches to studying these complex relations. Timely and illuminating, these essays set a new standard for food studies, not just the study of African American foodways. With forceful confidence, authors have brought forth histories buried in archives, cookbooks, and library shelves. They turn accepted truths on their heads by revealing complexities and contradictions, using an array of methodologies. The title chapter, written by editor Wallach, examines the role of food at Tuskegee Institute as a cultural, political, and economic strategy to advance "racial progress." Another chapter focuses on the intersections of soul food and "magic and occult." Each tells a story or analyzes how power, gender, class, and race intersect in, at, and through food. The authors give voice to generations of women and men whose foodways were rendered invisible by caricatures (Mammy, Aunt Jemima, watermelon, and fried chicken), and whose agency through food (assimilation, protest, poison) was ignored in the face of dominant (read white) narratives and histories. Every chapter tells a story that sheds light on convention while underscoring the centrality of food in the production and reproduction of race, identity, and nation. An exciting read.Summing Up: Essential. All academic levels/libraries.

This important and vigorously argued study of the process of emancipation in the US, a process that began with Vermont's abolition of slavery in 1777 and culminated with the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865--eighty-eight years--examines American abolition and emancipation over time, broadening the perspective on a story that usually begins with the rise of radical abolitionists in the early 1830s. Rael (Bowdoin College) also examines those processes over space, situating US emancipation within the larger context of the Atlantic World in an era of revolution and abolition. Saint-Domingue (Haiti) and the US were the only two nations to abolish slavery through violence and war; in both areas (and only in these two areas), Rael argues, the "slave power" was a dominant political and social element. The power wielded by slaveholders, which Rael discusses in detail, thus virtually guaranteed emancipation would not be a product of the political process, but rather its breakdown. With its wider chronological lens and hemispheric context, Rael's book is a must-read study of slavery and its end in the US.Summing Up: Essential. All levels/libraries.

The 1955 abduction and murder of Emmett Till shocked and disgusted the world. The acquittal of the 14-year-old African American's killers made the shock even more enduring. A generation of young people in particular, including many who would help lead the civil rights movement in sit-ins and as Freedom Riders in Albany and Birmingham, drew stern lessons from the events in Money, Mississippi, that fateful summer. Anderson, an editor at Signature Books, has written what will surely remain the most thorough book on the murder, its aftermath, and its larger legacy. Forensic in his reconstruction of the details of the case and judicious in his arguments, Anderson reveals more about that night than has ever been known, adding not only depth to the involvement of Roy Bryant and J. W. Milam, who had been acquitted of the killing (making their later admission of culpability in Till's death inLookmagazine all the more galling), but also showing the roles of several other key figures and incorporating the memories of witnesses and other evidence. At times, Anderson's devotion to detail can bury the reader, but historians will welcome his commitment to the story. It will become the go-to reference for scholars and those who teach the Till case in classrooms.Summing Up: Essential. All levels/libraries.

This extraordinary volume, the first in the "Voices from Nez Perce Country" series, is foundational for any study of Nez Perce ethnohistory. Painstakingly edited and annotated by recognized scholars, the work contains more than 270 carefully selected and fully attributed primary source documents, including diary excerpts, military reports, missionary and explorer accounts, and oral histories. In her forward, Mallickan (Nez Perce and Shoshone Paiute) explains the cultural significance of oral histories and efforts to bring Native perspectives to this volume. Extensive footnotes, particularly in W. R. Swagerty's 40-page authoritative literature review of Nez Perce history prior to 1877, are invaluable. The next 17 chapters trace early Nez Perce history through primary sources; each begins with footnoted introductions providing useful historical and cultural context. A detailed index adds to usability. Editor Baird (emer., library, Univ. of Idaho) collected Nez Perce documents for nearly three decades. The result is this hefty volume, which saves researchers the need to travel to archives and libraries around the country. This volume fills a niche in the literature on Nez Perce history and culture, and sets a high bar for other compilations of tribe-specific primary source documents. Indispensable for all libraries with programs in history, ethnohistory, Western Americana, and Native studies.Summing Up: Essential. All levels/libraries.

This book is an extraordinarily beautiful, state-of-the-art, authoritative, and gloriously and imaginatively illustrated account of Indigenous coastal peoples of California from the earliest archaeological evidence to the present day. All 17 essays, each shorter than ten pages, are successfully written for a broad constituency of readers, including students, Native Californians, general readers, and archaeologists. The collection begins with a one-page chronology of coastal California Indian history, followed by a map of all Native California language groups at the time of European contact and a masterful lead essay by editor Gamble (Univ. of California at Santa Barbara) on "Thirteen Thousand Years on the Coast." Abundant new research by Gamble and others, including Kent Lightfoot (Univ. of California at Berkeley; "Managing the Land with Fire" and "Shell Mound Builders of San Francisco Bay"), gives cutting-edge perspectives on California prehistory. With its well-selected illustrations and list of selected readings, the book is a stunning gift to general readers and a clarion testimony to the high quality of current scholarship on the Indigenous peoples of coastal California.Summing Up: Essential. All levels/libraries.

Randolph (history and African American studies, Michigan) breaks new ground in this first full-length biography of black feminist radical Florynce "Flo" Kennedy. Despite Kennedy's numerous contributions to civil rights, black power, feminism, and the New Left, she has--until now--received little attention from scholars. Randolph's work, which helps to restore Kennedy to her rightful place in history, reveals much not only about the life and career of Kennedy herself, but also about the interconnectedness of post-WW II social movements and the development of radical politics more generally. Using an impressive array of sources previously unavailable to other researchers, such as Kennedy's personal papers and new oral histories, Randolph persuasively argues that black feminists were critical to shaping post-WW II women's movements from the very beginning. Their embrace of black power and their insistence on combating sexism and racism together not only strengthened feminist efforts but also forged bridges among movements for social change in the post-WW II era. This interpretation significantly expands the historical scholarship, much of which has ignored the contributions of black feminists or minimized their influence.Summing Up: Highly recommended. All academic levels/libraries.

For 50 years, the "go to" monograph for an overview of agriculture during the US Civil War has beenAgriculture and the Civil War, by Paul W. Gates (CH, Mar'66). That distinction passes now to this book by Hurt (history, Purdue), which incorporates recent scholarship, primary source research, and extensive use of contemporary publications that targeted agrarian readers. While the primary arrangement of Gates's work is geographic, Hurt approaches the topic chronologically. His 10 chapters address from Union, Confederate, and border state perspectives the war's impact on agriculture and how the ability to produce, process, and transport food, fiber, and livestock affected the conduct and outcome of the war. The presentation is formulaic at times, but the context that Hurt constructs is the work's principal strength. Institutions offering courses on the Civil War, Reconstruction, and southern history will also want to purchase Hurt's 2015 publicationAgriculture and the Confederacy: Policy, Productivity, and Power in the Civil War South(CH, Aug'15, 52-6414). Food and Agriculture during the Civil War belongs in every academic library.Summing Up: Essential. All levels/libraries.

As he did in the first of two volumes on FDR and his presidency,Franklin D. Roosevelt: Road to the New Deal, 1882-1939 (CH, Apr'16, 53-3646), Daniels (emer., Univ. of Cincinnati) focuses on the words Roosevelt addressed to the American people and the responses those messages engendered. The result is a detailed analysis of news articles and press conferences, supplemented with memoirs and extensive references to works of other historians. The author provides a vibrant portrait of FDR's leadership, supporting his claim that FDR led the US into the modern era. Daniels also marvels at FDR's ability to keep his eye on reform and postwar planning while managing the war effort. He stresses the importance of the Reorganization Act Roosevelt pushed through Congress in 1939 and the power it gave him to govern through executive order. Some results were deplorable, such as the internment of Japanese Americans; others allowed FDR to override the anti-New Deal coalition in Congress. The book's one fault is that the author's chronological, episodic framework occasionally leaves Roosevelt's overall strategy obscured, but in sum, Daniels's illuminating study is a significant contribution to the scholarship on FDR.Summing Up: Essential. All levels/libraries.

This thematic, chronological account of Metis history outlines this uniquely North American people's attempts to create and re-create enduring identities from the 18th to the 21st centuries. Historian Ens (Univ. of Alberta) and anthropologist Sawchuk (emer., Brandon Univ.) are well-established scholars of Metis studies, and this ambitious and important work is their attempt to update, revisit, and pull together three centuries of Metis history in North America. They outline the ethnogenesis of the Metis and place them in historical and political context. Who and what constituteMetis have been widely debated in Canada since the Constitution Act, 1982 recognized them as one of Canada's Aboriginal peoples. The Metis struggle for recognition and rights, however, continues to the present day, with the Supreme Court of Canada ruling unanimously as recently as spring 2016 that the Metis fall under federal jurisdiction, meaning they should no longer be deprived of significant federal funding for programs, services, and other benefits. Ens and Sawchuk have written the most comprehensive and balanced view of Metis history to date, which will provide much-needed context for all who seek to better understand who the Metis are and the centuries of struggle they have faced.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Most levels/libraries.

Barreyre (EHESS, Paris) has written a thorough and intriguing analysis of the national political (re)alignment that occurred in the decade or so after the US Civil War. Through exacting statistical analysis of congressional roll-call votes, as well as careful attention to the political materials of the era, Barreyre traces the interaction of party (Democrats, Republicans, and various factions thereof) and section (South, Northeast, West [Midwest]) to produce what he calls a spatial analysis of US political culture. Crucial to his analysis is the "money question"--the complex and compelling debate over currency that shaped the political economy of the US during the last third of the 19th century. In this regard, Barreyre provides a remarkably lucid treatment of the issue, one that integrates the money question firmly into its larger political and economic contexts--a rare historiographic feat. Readers might disagree with Barreyre's definition of Reconstruction, more circumscribed than much of the era's recent scholarship; even Americans of that time recognized the elasticity of the term. But that quibble doesn't obscure the impressive nature of this important treatment of Reconstruction. A must read.Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates and above.

Brundage (Univ. of California, Santa Cruz) has taken on a difficult and challenging topic: Irish nationalism in the US from the United Irishmen in 1798 to the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement in 1998. Each side of the equation was in constant motion throughout the period. Brundage succeeds in providing a readable and persuasive analysis that draws on an impressive body of research while addressing the diverse secondary literature on the topic. He develops the continuities within Irish nationalism as well as its ability to adapt to changes in both Ireland and the US, with full attention to the people and personal conflicts involved. This will be the starting point for future studies of Irish nationalism in the US for some time. Brundage ties together a long and complex history by close attention to sources and events on both sides of the Atlantic. He is also thoroughly familiar with the secondary literature. The book will work well in courses on Irish history as well as on Irish America and the Irish diaspora generally. The bibliography is a resource in itself. The inclusion of illustrations, which are well chosen, will be especially useful for undergraduates.Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates and above.

In this model of multiarchival research, Mitchell (North Carolina State Univ.) offers a comprehensive history of the two African crises that received sustained attention from the Carter administration, one in southern Africa centered on Rhodesia and the other, the war between Somalia and Ethiopia in the African Horn. The author succeeds admirably in telling these focused, often forgotten tales while using them to shed light on broader issues in 1970s history. These include the nature of Carter and his administration, the Cold War, post-Vietnam War political divisions, and connections between domestic racial politics and foreign affairs. Using sources from the US, Africa, Cuba, Europe, and more, plus interviews with many of the principals, including Carter and African leaders, Mitchell develops fully the international contexts for policy choices. In addition, and crucially, she builds detailed domestic political contexts for understanding Carter's policies in relation to Congress and increasingly critical conservatives. Mitchell writes clearly in sweeping away historical judgments she sees as myths, most prominently concerning Jimmy Carter (always a Cold Warrior, in Mitchell's formulation) and his principal advisers. On these questions, her concluding chapter is especially strong. An impressive historical work in every respect.Summing Up: Essential. All academic levels/libraries.

This excellent, penetrating study presents much-needed information about the Ex-Slave Project's creation. Stewart's compelling study of the contexts of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) collection of over 2,300 African Americans' personal stories of bondage offers critical historical insight into fights over the history of chattel slavery. Examining Federal Writers' Project records, Stewart (history, Cornell College) deftly peels back the layers of the competing racial agendas that gave shape to the WPA's ex-slave narratives and subsequent histories of slavery. Ethnographers battled over how African American history and culture should be collected and presented. Federal and state workers wrangled over resources and for editorial control over the histories developed. Whether they were slaveholders' descendants who needed to present slavery as a benevolent institution, or descendants of enslaved people who believed an honest but redemptive history of slavery's horrors was required to make a case for black people's entitlement to citizenship rights, interviewers clashed with each other, federal directors, and their informants. Formerly enslaved Americans had priorities of their own that informed whether and what they revealed or concealed about their stories. An important book deserving of a wide readership.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Most levels/libraries.

Vietnam has often dominated the discussion concerning the success or failure of Lyndon Johnson's presidency. "If not for Vietnam" assumes that LBJ's demise in 1968 was due mostly to his failures in Southeast Asia. However, in a very lucid and beautifully written narrative, Woods (history, Univ. of Arkansas) finds that part of LBJ's downfall was due to his "Great Society" program. In fact, Woods points out that Johnson's "liberal nationalism" went against the "American Creed" of small government and individualism. Realizing fully the risk of his ambitious program, LBJ nevertheless demonstrated idealism in pushing forward the greatest domestic program since the New Deal. However, this push was often counter to Johnson's cautious instincts. At times in 1964, it seemed that he was, as one observer put it, "Franklin Delano Hoover." Moreover, LBJ trusted existing institutions rather than community action programs, preferring to deal with "Dick Daley" instead of the Urban League. Indeed, law and order concerns after urban riots may have had more of an impact in bringing Johnson down in March 1968 than did the Tet Offensive. Along with Wood's earlier biography,LBJ: Architect of AmericanAmbition (CH, Mar'07, 44-4070), this work is an original and superb contribution.Summing Up: Essential. All levels/libraries.

Historian Pearson (Collin College) has produced a truly outstanding study on the pre-WW I origins of the "open-shop" movement, which sought to ban "closed shop" labor organizing and was widely termed by employers the "American Plan" after WW I, thus not so subtly suggesting that unions were "un-American." Using a dazzling array of sources, including archival material, vast swaths of contemporary newspapers and magazines (especially trade journals), and a wide range of secondary sources, Pearson demonstrates in a clearly organized and written account that while employers alleged that unions sought to impose collective "dictation" and limit the ability of "free workers" to work when and as they wished, they themselves sought to retain the ability to unilaterally control workers by organizing, on both city-wide and national industrial bases, powerful business organizations that successfully used techniques such as blacklisting, national recruitment of strikebreakers, and appeals to judges and police to severely limit or entirely ban strikes and related activities such as picketing. As coal baron George Baer notoriously declared in 1902, labor was viewed as seeking to interfere with the "Christian gentlemen to whom God has given control of the property rights of the country."Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above.

This splendid, succinct volume summarizes and interprets the African American struggle against oppression--the "Six Degrees of Segregation" in housing, education, voting, employment, criminal processes, and access to public spaces and conveyances. Following the current interpretation of the "Long Black Freedom Movement," which contextualizes the familiar civil rights movement in ongoing liberation efforts prior to theBrown decision and then assesses the dreams achieved and deferred since the assassination of Dr. King, Williams (Fairfield Univ.) provides a trenchant analysis of the movement from the early 20th century through the recent racial strife in Ferguson, Missouri. He skillfully narrates both the multifaceted stories and the scholarly debates interpreting their meaning. Four chapters convey the origin of the movement, the familiar and evolving quest for legal equality, the interrelationships and distinctiveness of black power to the storied quest for inclusion, and the role artistic expression plays in shaping the movement and African American identity. A concluding chapter captures the tension between progress made and the great deal of unfinished work. Specialists will value Williams's insights and novices his clear writing as he weaves together the various expressions of the struggle into a coherent narrative.Summing Up: Essential. All levels/libraries.

Walther's superb book demonstrates how US beliefs and stereotypes about Islam influenced US foreign policy toward the Muslim world. Her choice to focus on the era prior to WW I challenges the perception that the US had little official interest in Middle East prior to the world wars, and widens the "Muslim World" beyond the Middle East/Ottoman Empire to places like North Africa and the Philippines. The author's account of the US empire's treatment of the Muslim population in the Philippines is especially informative. The book's concluding chapter demonstrates how Americans viewed Ottoman actions through a religious lens, particularly concerning the Armenian genocide, which Americans understood as a religious genocide--Muslim Turks removing Armenian Christians. The reality was much more complex. The Young Turks challenged this view, placing their actions in terms of nationalism while also highlighting US hypocrisy by noting the lynching of African Americans. Walther's decision to include African American responses to these charges, while not the focus of the chapter, introduces a fascinating research avenue. Through its analysis of race, religion, and US exceptionalism, this book provides a deeper understanding of US approaches to the Islamic world.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above.

It is easy to forget that for a brief time, Spiro Agnew appeared poised to succeed Richard Nixon as president of the United States. He was so positioned because he became an outspoken critic of what he dismissed as "nattering nabobs of negativism." In a superb biography that is as comprehensive as it is brief, Coffey (Quincy Univ., IL) rediscovers the career of Nixon's first vice president. Agnew, who began his career as a county executive outside Baltimore City, started his political journey as a moderate, becoming governor of Maryland after defeating a racist rabble-rouser named George Mahoney. Plucked from obscurity by Nixon at the Miami Republican Party convention in 1968, Agnew steadily drifted to the Right, disillusioned by what he saw as liberal permissiveness. Held in contempt by Nixon, Agnew by 1969 became a powerful voice for a new conservatism that purported to defend the suburban values the vice president so dearly held. His career was cut short by scandal in September 1973, and Agnew was forced to resign. An engrossing and scholarly effort, nicely researched and sensitively written.Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels/libraries.

Self-proclaimed as a definitive history of racist ideas in the US, this exhaustive, encyclopedic opus lives up to that claim. Kendi's mighty tome is breathtaking in its scope, beginning with Biblical stories of the curse of Ham and Aristotle's theory that climate explained why black people were dark in color. In his history of ideas about "race" and alleged black inferiority, Kendi (African American history, Univ. of Florida) examines sources as diverse as Cotton Mather, Thomas Jefferson, William Lloyd Garrison, W. E. B. Du Bois, and E. Franklin Frazier. The author blasts not only traditional racists who insisted on immutable biological inferiority, but also well-meaning assimilationists, both black and white, who attributed black inferiority to the "imbruting" consequences of slavery, matriarchal families, or dysfunctional ghetto culture. Writing from a "left of center" perspective, Kendi praises Angela Davis while excoriating neoconservatives and the likes of Richard Herrnstein, Charles Murray, Abigail Thernstrom and Stephan Thernstrom ("Few whites are now racists"), John McWhorter, and color-blind racism. Progressive antiracists will love this book, while those on the Right will hate it. A great companion to Winthrop Jordan'sWhite over Black (CH, Apr'68), at 511 pages it will be difficult to get students to read it in full, but intrepid readers will find it both worthwhile and extraordinary.Summing Up: Essential. All levels/libraries.

The Wounded Knee Massacre of 1890 has received considerable treatment over the years by historians. However, this very inventive and original work shows that the image of that remarkable tragedy has evolved and come to symbolize, in many ways, the manner by which the US expanded, historically, over Indian nations. In a brevity of pages and with very eloquent prose, the author presents two overarching themes: how non-Indians and Indians have come to view both the event of Wounded Knee and its greater symbolism. The sources from which Grua draws out these two conflicting schools of thought are very well conceived and also represent the exhaustive archival searches that the author undertook in order to produce a book of this highest standard of scholarship. This study presents a new light by which Wounded Knee will be seen for decades. While historians and the general reading audience of this genre will find this work fascinating, professors will serve their students well by including this in reading lists for courses on US and American Indian history.Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels/libraries.

Feldman (Univ. of Alabama, Birmingham) breaks new ground in this interesting contribution to the literature on 20th-century southern politics, adding to studies on the Dixiecrat movement and the new conservatism advanced by historians such as Dan Carter, e.g.,The Politics of Rage (CH, Apr'96, 33-4707), and Kari Frederickson, e.g.,The Dixiecrat Revolt ... (CH, Jul'01, 38-6381). Feldman disputes the idea that the New Deal South and postwar leaders such as Alabama governor Jim Folsom represented a lost era of racial progress. Indeed, he sees Strom Thurmond's and later George Wallace's shifts as being consistent with an older tradition of racial politics. According to Feldman, so-called liberals such as John Temple Graves were, in fact, clever racists. He refers to their approach as "sophistic pruning," simply abandoning the harshest realities of Jim Crow to preserve the existing social order. In a fascinating study of the 1944 election, Feldman describes the transformation of racial politics from the "good old boys" to corporate types. Suddenly, anti-labor was conflated with segregation as part of a great "melding." Feldman certainly consigns the description of southern resistance to civil rights as "populist" to the historical rubbish can. A very acute and original interpretation of Alabama politics in the New Deal and immediate postwar period.Summing Up: Essential. All levels/libraries.

The Winchester rifle and Colt .45 are iconic, part of the US obsession with guns extending from the American Revolution. Historian Haag offers a provocative argument about the development of this gun culture. She effectively contends that it emerged in the 19th and early 20th centuries as a result of mass production techniques that required creative marketing to sell guns, which were perceived as an unexceptional commodity and similar to any other mass-produced item. Selling guns was unremarkable and simply a business decision to create a commercial market. Drawing upon extensive archival research, especially in the Winchester Repeating Arms Company records, Haag carefully depicts founder Oliver Winchester's extensive efforts to sell guns and create new markets in the US when international sales declined. Other gun manufacturers, such as Colt and Remington, followed suit. Haag argues that Winchester was quiet on the social consequences of gun sales; however, Sarah Winchester, Oliver's daughter-in-law and eventual principal stockholder, developed a moral conscience that drove her to a reclusive life in an architectural riddle labeled Mystery House in Santa Clara, CA. Despite profits from meeting military needs during WW I, over-expansion and indebtedness hurt the industry and led to a nationwide marketing campaign to create demand for guns. This book must be read.Summing Up: Essential. All public and academic levels/libraries.

For high school history teachers seeking resources to bulk up their background in a still-underrepresented aspect of the US past, as well as for professors preparing for graduate seminars in US social and cultural history, this handbook should prove illuminating. Comprising 27 essays by leading historians, the volume explores the historiography of nearly all key aspects of Asian American history. More than that, many of the essays contain insightful analyses of Asian American historical experiences such as immigration, discrimination, political and social activism, labor militancy, religion, education, and gender and sexuality. It is astonishing to realize that a couple of generations ago, one could count the worthy studies of people of Asian ancestry in the US truly on one hand. Since the late 1900s, thanks to the emergence of an Asian American political movement generating scholarly and community support for Asian American studies departments and programs on various US college campuses, Asian American historical scholarship has flourished. Unfortunately, too much of the way history is taught in the US marginalizes Asian American experiences, but hopefully this handbook will offer a corrective.Summing Up: Essential. All levels/libraries.

Popular in his lifetime though too often underestimated by presidential scholars, Dwight Eisenhower has enjoyed a reputational renaissance in the past three decades, thanks to a spate of biographies and specialized studies based on newly available sources. No recent work better delineates the dynamics of the Eisenhower presidency than Gellman's, with its emphasis on the mutually beneficial partnership of a strong chief executive and his willing apprentice. Prodigiously researched, the book illuminates Nixon's value to the Eisenhower administration along a broad front, including Nixon's efforts at party building, his consistent support for black civil rights, and his willingness to take on foreign policy chores that at one point put his life at risk. Gellman acknowledges Nixon's annoyance with Eisenhower for slights during the 1952, 1956, and 1960 campaign seasons but emphasizes the president's expressions of appreciation for Nixon's contributions to his administration's success.The President and the Apprentice lacks the narrative felicity of comparably important books, notably, Richard Norton Smith's recent biography of Nelson Rockefeller,On His Own Terms. That said, Gellman's approach pays dividends to patient readers. This is the best-documented, most persuasive account now available of the Eisenhower-Nixon relationship.Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates and above.

This book's title draws attention to the way in which US historical writing has for too long obscured the true character of the Ohio Indian confederacy's victory over the US Army under General Arthur St. Clair along the banks of the Wabash River on November 4, 1791. Scrupulous research in archival sources bolsters a well-organized and fluid narrative. Emphasizing the significance of the event as experienced and perceived by those involved, Calloway (Dartmouth) offers a detailed account of not only the battle itself, but also the broader historical context in which it occurred. He intends for this detailed case study to promote rethinking of the "inevitability" of the US conquest of Indigenous nations, and to encourage an alternative focus on moments where events trended in a different direction. The author reminds readers of the long history of Native peoples' commitment to the defense of their homelands in his concluding remarks on contemporary American Indian participation in the US military. Calloway's close analysis of a long-forgotten battle invites a critical rethinking of the early national period that will demand attention from a wide array of readers.Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels/libraries.

Kadura (Peking Univ., China) provides readers with one of the finest syntheses of the US's last years in Vietnam, though in the introduction, he asserts the study "goes beyond ... by introducing the concepts of equilibrium strategy and insurance policy." His engaging writing, deeply archival research, and less ideological approach presents Nixonian strategic thinking in a much more nuanced and pragmatic style. Bridging the "decent interval" scholarship of Jeffrey Kimball and Larry Berman's "permanent war" thesis, Kadura keeps readers focused on the geostrategic importance of getting out of the Cold War more than the regional get out of Vietnam emphasis. Unfortunately, as he so rightly points out, Watergate coupled with the Ford pardon of Nixon disrupted both disengagements. Kadura's revelation of the multi-dimensionality of executive decision making wedded to the credibility of superpower significance remains a steadfast component of US foreign policy studies. In a prescient undertone, the author also begins to separate the Nixon-Kissinger team into the more realistically pragmatic Nixon as strategist, Kissinger as tactical partner. The result was a less than historically significant extrication from Vietnam and a more important leadership role in global affairs through a "coherent, calculated ... and successful strategy."Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels/libraries.

This important book, which students, scholars, and policy makers in the US and Canada should read, is a testament to the quality of the work and the still limited understanding of its subject in both countries. Sociologist Woolford (Univ. of Manitoba, Canada) provides a nuanced account of the inception, intention, and impacts of boarding schools for Indigenous peoples in North America. Far more than compiling a catalog of abuses, he offers a critical assessment of settler colonialism, its targeting of Native nations for elimination and later assimilation, the place of education in such efforts, and more recent calls for redress and justice. Woolford rightfully places boarding schools and the experiences of Indigenous people in dialogue with the increasingly sophisticated literature on genocide. While boarding schools have received much scrutiny, Woolford deserves praise for his comparative history. It allows a fuller understanding of boarding and residential schools in each country, while highlighting the common patterns and processes uniting them. Of special note, the book offers a compelling interpretation of the differing paths toward redress in the US and Canada, stressing a combination of discursive, political, and structural elements.Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates and above.

Campney (Univ. of Texas Rio Grande Valley) makes a significant contribution to the field of racial violence and the understanding of the history of Kansas in the post-Civil War period. He outlines a new definition of racial violence beyond lynching that encompasses all acts of racially inspired violence, including race riots, mobbing, killing by police, and violence. These acts, while infrequent, were significant in the consciousness of residents and received notable attention from Kansas newspaper editors. Campney makes extensive use of the newspaper collection of the Kansas State Historical Society to illustrate the statewide nature of racial violence. He also reveals the role of African Americans in Kansas in exposing and resisting racist violence. Along with the earlierLynching in the New South, by W. Fitzhugh Brundage (1993), and William D. Carrigan'sThe Making of a Lynching Culture(CH, Sep'05, 43-0513), This Is Not Dixie secures the University of Illinois Press's dominance as a publisher of scholarship on racial violence in the post-Civil War era. For students of Kansas's image in the 20th century, this book adds an additional dimension to the portrayal by Robert Smith Bader inHayseeds, Moralizers, and Methodists (1988).Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels/libraries.

No short review of Adams's magisterial book could possibly do it justice. Deploying borderlands history as an analytical framework, Adams (emer., Cleveland State Univ.), whose previous work focuses on Indian boarding schools, examines the town of Magdalena, New Mexico, from 1890 to 1990 by reconstructing coming-of-age stories for Magdalena's ethnic Mexican, Anglo, and Alamo Navajo children. In part one, Adams separates the three groups through cultural analyses of family, religion, work, play, and daily life, much like the relative cultural separateness that different groups experienced at points of contact in the 19th-century borderlands. Chapters 4-6 examine children from each culture who crossed cultural borders, clashing and coming together mainly in area schools. The full promise of borderlands history comes to bear in part three. Here, Adams examines children in the region's modern period along with the messiness and promise of crossing cultures through mechanisms like dating and high school sports. Although Adams is clearly a talented practitioner of borderlands history, his book's true power lies in his exceptionally clear prose and command of narrative history. Reading like a fine novel, Adams's history of children, families, and growing up in a rural borderland reads with a compassion that is rare among the heap of detached scholarly of works. This book is a treasure.Summing Up: Essential. All levels/libraries.

The advent of the 21st century has presented the US with a profound shift in its military engagements, moving away from the previous century's Euro-centered conflicts and opening the Middle East as the new cauldron for conflict. Bailey and Immerman's edited collection of essays on the country's two most recent wars is simply outstanding. Treating both conflicts from a variety of angles, well-known scholars such as Terry H. Anderson, Stephen Biddle, Peter Feaver, and a dozen others explore these two conflicts with a keen analytical eye. There have been numerous recent accounts of both wars, but this new book brings the two conflicts together in a way not done before. For both established scholars and informed general readers, this collection is an excellent source of thoughtful and learned assessments of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. A mandatory contribution to the current literature on the topic.Summing Up: Essential. All public and academic levels/libraries.

From its opening pages,Unfreedom breaks with traditional historical paradigms. In examining slavery in 18th-century Boston, Hardesty (Western Washington Univ.) tries to understand the institution as being part of a "continuum of unfreedom" that is part of a class system rather than outside it. His fascinating study shows how slaves sought to negotiate greater autonomy within the system. In the process, the author breathes life into the social and cultural world of enslaved Bostonians living at the bottom of a premodern society filled with other unfree individuals, such as indentured servants and apprentices. He concludes that the shift to a revolutionary ideology that opposed slavery as anathema to natural rights did not replace this more traditional world view until the eve of the American Revolution. Although the focus is on slavery in Boston, Hardesty deftly places his subject within the larger context of slavery in the Atlantic world. Well written and meticulously researched, this outstanding book is an important contribution to the understanding of slavery, New England history, Colonial America, and the 18th-century Atlantic world.Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates and above.

Ojibwe historian and linguist Treuer (Bemidji State Univ.) has provided a gift to the Red Lake Nation, to the field of American Indian studies, and to US history. He draws on extensive documentary research in Red Lake tribal archives and enriches it immeasurably with oral histories. The Red Lake Nation was a leading force in Ojibwe expansion and has been more successful than most in preserving its political and cultural integrity amidst the pressures and exploitations visited upon Native Americans and their governments. Treuer provides a sound summary of four centuries of Ojibwe history in the traditional style of history. He also provides a source for Red Lakes' future generations to understand and take pride in their history and in their national heroes, strong men and women who shaped the nation despite the actions of the US government. Treuer highlights Red Lake leaders and activists White Thunderbird, Moose Dung, He Who Is Spoken To, Nodin Wind, Peter Graves, Roger Jourdain, and Anna Gibbs, applauding them for their genius with only occasional hyperbole as well as acknowledging their flaws. These were people who accomplished much. Their descendants can know them because of this fine book. Indian Country needs more studies like this one.Summing Up: Essential. All public and academic levels/libraries.