Tracing the political, ideological, and constitutional arguments from the imperial crisis with Britain and the drafting of the Articles of Confederation to the ratification of the Constitution and the political conflict between Federalists and Jeffersonians, The American Revolution, State Sovereignty, and the American Constitutional Settlement, 1765-1800 reveals the largely forgotten importance of state sovereignty to American constitutionalism. Contrary to modern popular perceptions and works by other academics, the Founding Fathers did not establish a constitutional system based upon a national popular sovereignty nor a powerful national government designed to fulfill a grand philosophical purpose. Instead, most Americans throughout the period maintained that a constitutional order based upon the sovereignty of states best protected and preserved liberty. Enshrining their preference for state sovereignty in Article II of the Articles of Confederation and in the Tenth and Eleventh Amendments to the federal constitution, Americans also claimed that state interposition-the idea that the states should intervene against any perceived threats to liberty posed by centralization-was an established and accepted element of state sovereignty.

The clash of modernity and an Amish buggy might be the first image that comes to one's mind when imagining Lancaster, Pennsylvania, today. But in the early to mid-eighteenth century, Lancaster stood apart as an active and religiously diverse, ethnically complex, and bustling city. On the eve of the American Revolution, Lancaster's population had risen to nearly three thousand inhabitants; it stood as a center of commerce, industry, and trade. While the German-speaking population-Anabaptists as well as German Lutherans, Moravians, and German Calvinists-made up the majority, about one-third were English-speaking Anglicans, Catholics, Presbyterians, Quakers, Calvinists, and other Christian groups. A small group of Jewish families also lived in Lancaster, though they had no synagogue. Carefully mining historical records and documents, from tax records to church membership rolls, Mark Haberlein confirms that religion in Lancaster was neither on the decline nor rapidly changing; rather, steady and deliberate growth marked a diverse religious population.

Too easily we forget that the process of European colonization was not simply a matter of armed invaders elbowing themselves into position to take charge. As John Juricek reminds us, the road to revolution was paved in part by complicated negotiations with Indians, as well as unique legal challenges. By 1763, Britain had defeated Spain and France for dominance over much of the continent and renewed efforts to repair relations with Indians, especially in the southern colonies. Over the ensuing decade the reconstitution of British-Creek relations stalled and then collapsed, ultimately leading the colonists directly into the arms of the patriot cause. Juricek's expertise uniquely situates him to examine and explain how British failures, including the growing gap between promises and actions, led not only to a loss of potential allies among the Creeks but also to the rapid conversion of dutiful British subjects into outraged revolutionaries.

Arguably, no other revolution in history has enjoyed such a brilliant gallery of thinkers as the one that led to the founding of the United States. America's Founding Fathers is centered on the personal philosophies, opinions, thoughts, witticisms, and feelings of the exemplary men who founded our nation. This book gathers together the founding fathers' best quotations on a variety of subjects including life, love, marriage, family, children, religion, patriotism, sacrifice, law, professionalism, medicine, public health, education, money, "modern" society, the Revolutionary War, humor, and death. Colleagues and rivals, friends and enemies, the eight founding fathers-Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, Benjamin Rush, and Thomas Paine-here provide their views on subjects as relevant now as ever.

Some Pennsylvania Women During the War of the Revolution, first published in 1898 by the Harrisburg Publishing Company, presents biographical sketches of almost seventy women who supported the American Revolution and the soldiers at Valley Forge, noting their lives, family history, character, and the particulars of their roles in the revolutionary effort, including providing food, clothing, shelter, and support for the patriots. As the author writes in his prefatory note, this book aims to bring to light "the patriotism, sufferings, and self-denials" of the women of the American Revolution in Pennsylvania, whom he calls "the Matrons of the Declaration." The book examines the lives of women at the end of the eighteenth century and shows the value of their contributions to the war. "The saviors of our country at Valley Forge, in their raggedness and misery, would have starved," Egle writes, "had it not been for that devoted band of true-hearted loving women whose homes were on or lying near the frontiers of our grand old Commonwealth." This book provides a fitting tribute to these women and their roles in the state's, and nation's, history.

Every war has refugees; every revolution has exiles. Most of the refugees of the French Revolution mourned the demise of the monarchy. Lessons from America examines an unusual group who did not. Doina Pasca Harsanyi looks at the American experience of a group of French liberal aristocrats, early participants in the French Revolution, who took shelter in Philadelphia during the Reign of Terror. The book traces their path from enlightened salons to revolutionary activism to subsequent exile in America and, finally, back to government posts in France--illuminating the ways in which the French experiment in democracy was informed by the American experience.

The loss of America in 1781 has traditionally been blamed on incompetent British military commanders and political leaders whose arrogant confidence and out-dated tactics were no match for the innovative and determined Americans. But this is far from the truth. Weaving together the personal stories of ten prominent characters, including King George III, Prime Minister Lord North, General Burgoyne, and the Earl of Sandwich, Andrew O'Shaughnessy demolishes the myths, emerging with a very different and much richer account of the conflict - one driven by able and even brilliant leadership.

David Zeisberger (1721-1808) was the head of a group of Moravian missionaries that settled in the Upper Ohio Valley in 1772 to minister to the Delaware Nation. For the next ten years, Zeisberger lived among the Delaware, becoming a trusted adviser and involving himself not only in religious activities but also in political and social affairs. During this time he kept diaries in which he recorded the full range of his activities. Published in English for the first time, The Moravian Mission Diaries of David Zeisberger offers an unparalleled insider's view of Indian society during times of both war and peace.

Zeisberger's diaries, today housed at the Moravian Archives in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, present a detailed picture of the effect of the American Revolution on one Indian nation--not only on political issues but also in terms of its economy, culture, and demographic structure. A later portion of the diaries, covering the post-Revolutionary War years, was translated and published in the nineteenth century, but the 1772-81 diaries have never been published in English translation. This translation is based on the full scholarly edition of the diaries, which Wellenreuther and Wessel published in Germany in 1995. Publication of this volume will forever change the way we see the impact of the American Revolution on Indian life and on the Ohio country.

During the era of the American Revolution and long after, the name Elizabeth Graeme Fergusson was well known in Philadelphia, recognized as belonging to one of British North America's most illustrious women of letters. One admirer dubbed her "the most learned woman in America." In this, the first full-length biography of Fergusson, Anne M. Ousterhout brilliantly captures the life and times of America's first great female savant.

Born in 1737 to a wealthy family, Elizabeth Graeme Fergusson excelled from an early age. Although women in her day were denied higher education, Fergusson read widely, educating herself in literature, history, and languages, even reading classical literature in the original tongues, an unusual ability for a colonial woman. She wrote prolifically--often until midnight or later, spending but a few hours sleeping--and published her poetry. Her journals of a trip to England and Scotland circulated widely among admiring Philadelphians. During the 1770s she hosted a Saturday evening salon at her home that was unrivaled in the colonies for its brilliance.

Yet despite her achievements, Fergusson's life was fraught with financial woes, bad romances, and treasonous plots that hounded her throughout her life. After her father forbade her marriage to Benjamin Franklin's illegitimate son, she secretly married Henry Hugh Fergusson, a British Loyalist who left her before the Revolution. Henry's actions, together with Elizabeth's own political indiscretions, earned her potent enemies, leading to the confiscation of her family estate, Graeme Park. Although she eventually succeeded in reclaiming her property, her reputation was tarnished in the process. Her efforts to justify her actions were tireless, alienating friends and making the last fifteen years of her life miserable.

The Most Learned Woman in America masterfully narrates Fergusson's efforts to live an appropriately genteel life, even as she struggled against the limits that her society placed on its women. In the process, we can begin to understand the conflicts--internal and external--that women of the Revolutionary generation faced.

Published by the Pennsylvania German Society in 1908, this volume is one among many compiled to help illuminate the achievements of the Pennsylvania Germans during our nation's early years. In the pre-World War I era, such works were written to dismiss the common belief that "the German element of this country has been practically a non-entity in its development" and to lift the "curtain of ignorance" on the subject. In this volume, Henry Melchior Muhlenberg Richards takes on this task by examining the role played by Pennsylvania Germans during the American Revolution.

In eighteen chapters, Richards details the involvement of Pennsylvania Germans in every aspect of the war, from the raising of battalions to the battles in which they fought. He recounts their activities on the home front, in public life, and on the frontier, and he also writes about prisoners and the noncombatant pacifists who contributed to the war effort. Richards pays significant attention to the Pennsylvania German contribution to Pennsylvania's battalions and line, reproducing regimental rosters and profiling prominent men both in and outside of military service during the war. This name-heavy volume also includes substantial surname and general indexes.

On December 16, 1773, an estimated seven dozen men dumped roughly GBP10,000 worth of tea in Boston Harbor. This symbolic act unleashed a social, political, and economic firestorm throughout the colonies. Combining stellar scholarship with action-packed history, American Tempest reveals the truth behind the legendary event and examines its lasting consequence- the birth of an independent America.

The culture wars have distorted the dramatic story of how Americans came to worship freely. Many activists on the right maintain that the United States was founded as a "Christian nation." Many on the left contend that the First Amendment was designed to boldly separate church and state. Neither of these claims is true, argues Beliefnet.com editor in chief Steven Waldman. With refreshing objectivity, Waldman narrates the real story of how our nation's Founders forged a new approach to religious liberty.
"Founding Faith "vividly describes the religious development of five Founders. Benjamin Franklin melded the Puritan theology of his youth and the Enlightenment philosophy of his adulthood. John Adams's pungent views on religion stoked his revolutionary fervor and shaped his political strategy. George Washington came to view religious tolerance as a military necessity. Thomas Jefferson pursued a dramatic quest to "rescue" Jesus, in part by editing the Bible. Finally, it was James Madison who crafted an integrated vision of how to prevent tyranny while encouraging religious vibrancy.
The spiritual custody battle over the Founding Fathers and the role of religion in America continues today. Waldman at last sets the record straight, revealing the real history of religious freedom to be dramatic, unexpected, paradoxical, and inspiring.

The War for American Independence was essentially a civil war throughout the colonies: loyalists and patriots who had grown up together as countrymen found themselves fighting on opposing sides. Troy Bickham asserts that the war proved almost as divisive in the motherland, as the British wielded the almighty pen and went to battle on the pages of the press in Britain. Surpassing the breadth of previous studies on the subject, Making Headlines offers a look at the British press as a whole-including analysis of London newspapers, provincial newspapers, and monthly magazines. The free press in Britain, Bickham argues, was too widespread and too lucrative to be susceptible to significant government interference and therefore provided in-depth coverage on all aspects of the war. Private letters, official dispatches, extracts from foreign newspapers, maps, and detailed tables of fleet strengths and locations filled the pages of daily publications that provided more extensive and more rapid information than even the government could. Due to the inexpensive and easily accessible printed news, the average British citizen was often as well informed as a cabinet minister. The open editorial nature of the press also allowed someone as socially low as a blacksmith's wife, under the cloak of anonymity, to scrutinize and offer commentary on every political decision and military maneuver, all in front of a national audience. Bickham adeptly leads the reader on an exploration into the varied national debates that raged throughout Britain during the American Revolution, one of Britain's historically most unpopular wars. The British public debated how to defeat George Washington-whose perseverance and conduct was much admired in Britain-whether captured Americans should be held as prisoners of war or hung as traitors, and the morality of including American Indians in the war effort. Making Headlines also reflects the global perspective of the war held by most Britons, who saw the conflict not only as a fight for America but also as a struggle to protect their worldwide empire as America's European allies turned the conflict into a world war, threatening even the British Isles themselves. This study will appeal to those interested in early America, the American Revolution, British history, and media studies.

Daniel Clayton here reviews a series of encounters by explorers, traders, and politicians with the territory and native people of Vancouver Island in the late-18th and early-19th centuries. The book is divided into three parts - Spaces of European Exploration; Geographies of Capital; and Circulating Knowledge and Power. Each section examines the ways in which natives and Westerners were positioned in these phases of exploration, trade and imperial aggrandizement and chart how native and Western interests and fortunes became intertwined and then later diverged as Vancouver Island was fashioned as imperial space.

Under the leadership of Samuel Adams, patriot propagandists deliberately and conscientiously kept the issue of slavery off the agenda as goals for freedom were set for the American Revolution.

By comparing coverage in the publications of the patriot press with those of the moderate colonial press, this book finds that the patriots avoided, misinterpreted, or distorted news reports on blacks and slaves, even in the face of a vigorous antislavery movement. The Boston Gazette, the most important newspaper of the Revolution, was chief among the periodicals that dodged or excluded abolition. The author of this study shows that The Gazette misled its readers about the notable Somerset decision that led to abolition in Great Britain. She notes also that The Gazette excluded antislavery essays, even from patriots who supported abolition. No petitions written by Boston slaves were published, nor were any writings by the black poet Phillis Wheatley. The Gazette also manipulated the racial identity of Crispus Attucks, the first casualty in the Revolution. When using the word slavery, The Gazette took care to focus it not upon abolition but upon Great Britain's enslavement of its American colonies.

Since propaganda on behalf of the Revolution reached a high level of sophistication, and since Boston can be considered the foundry of Revolutionary propaganda, the author writes that the omission of abolition from its agenda cannot be considered as accidental but as intentional.

By the time the Revolution began, white attitudes toward blacks were firmly fixed, and these persisted long after American independence had been achieved. In Boston, notions of virtue and vigilance were shown to be negatively embodied in black colonists. These devil's imps were long represented in blackface in Boston's annual Pope Day parade.

Although the leaders of the Revolution did not articulate a national vision on abolition, the colonial antislavery movement was able to achieve a degree of success but only in drives through the individual colonies.

Patricia Bradley is the former director of the American Studies program at Temple University and is currently Chair of the Temple University Department of Journalism, Public Relations, and Advertising.

Stephen Sayre's career was far more remarkable for its diversity than for its success. At one time or another, Sayre was a soldier, merchant, banker, shipbuilder, politician, speculator, propagandist, diplomat, and inventor. He was also considered by some, as John Alden relates, ""a wicked schemer, a fool, a madman, an embezzler, and a traitor."" Following the dizzying course of Sayre's career, this biography reveals a vast panorama of life, both high and low, in the era of the American Revolution. Sayre frequented the polite society of England, Europe, and New York; twice married into a wealthy English family; and was elected for a term as sheriff of London. He also consorted with the actress Sophia Baddeley, one of the most notorious women of the time; was arrested and confined in the Tower of London for allegedly plotting to kidnap the king; and spent twenty months in a debtors' prison. If there was one constant in Sayre's life, it was his involvement in revolutionary politics. He was a fearless advocate of colonial rights in England, and after the outbreak of war in America he traveled to Prussia, Denmark, Sweden, and Russia to seek support for the revolution. Years later, he was an enthusiastic supporter of France's revolution. Working as an agent for the new French regime, he tried to secure it financial aid, promoted a scheme to purchase American weapons for the French army, argued for a French attack on Spanish Louisiana, and was active in diplomatic efforts to stave off war between Britain and France. Eventually, the turmoil of events in Paris drove away even as devoted a supporter as Sayre. He returned to America, where he continued to argue the cause of the French Revolution and quickly gained a reputation as an extremist. Engaging in the politics of the new American republic, Sayre assailed conservative forces in the nation, in particular the emerging Federalist party. He devoted much of his energy in later years to a persistent but unrewarded attempt to secure a post within the federal government and to somewhat more successful attempts to obtain payment for his past services to his country. In time he moved to Virginia to live with his stepson; he died there in 1818. From the beginning of his career, Stephen Sayre aspired to wealth, social position, and political influence. At various points in his life he achieved each of these goals, but finally they all eluded him. An outstanding patriot, Sayre was far too erratic in his behavior, far too mercurial a personality ever to be counted as a father of his country. He is better remembered as a kind of principled rogue, an adventurer in the service of his own ambitions and those of his country.

Milcah Martha Moore (1740-1829) lived and flourished in the Philadelphia area during its peak, when it was the center of commerce, politics, social life, and culture in the young republic. A well-educated woman, disowned by her Quaker Meeting for an unauthorized marriage, Moore knew and corresponded with many of the leading lights of her day. From her network of acquaintances, she created a commonplace book, which is published here for the first time.

Moore compiled her commonplace book during the American Revolution, carefully selecting works of poetry and prose that she and her friends most enjoyed reading and wanted to remember. Contained are 126 works of prose and poetry by at least sixteen different authors, mostly women. Catherine Blecki and Karin Wulf have edited and reproduced the entire collection, adding helpful annotations and interpretive essays that set the collection in historical and literary context.

Moore's Book will be a treasure trove for feminist and early American scholars, for it includes two of the most avidly sought-after bodies of writing from British America: sixteen new poems (twenty-four in all) by the Quaker polymath Susanna Wright and a previously lost portion of the journal kept by Elizabeth Graeme Fergusson during her trip to England. There is also a remarkable selection of pieces by Hannah Griffitts, the Quaker moralist and wit who commented on politics, society, and domesticity during the Revolution. Moore also included writings by Benjamin Franklin, Patrick Henry, and Samuel Fothergill.

While scholars have speculated about the extent to which elite women exchanged ideas through reading and writing during this period, Moore's Book is the richest surviving body of evidence revealing the nature and substance of women's intellectual community in British America. The quality of the writing is high and reflects a range of popular literary genres including religious and meditational poetry, elegies, verse epistles and extempore verse, hymns, occasional poems, letters, and journal writing. Topics range from family and friends to religion and mortality, to politics and war--belying the notion that women's concerns were limited only to a domestic sphere. Taken as a whole, Moore's collection presents an unparalleled view of the interests and tastes of educated women in early America.

Thomas Jefferson and the Marquis de Lafayette shared a singularly extraordinary friendship, one involved in the making of two revolutions - and two nations. Jefferson first met Lafayette in 1781, when the young French-born general was dispatched to Virginia to assist Jefferson, then the state's governor, in fighting off the British. The charismatic Lafayette, hungry for glory, could not have seemed more different from Jefferson, the reserved statesman. But when Jefferson, a newly-appointed diplomat, moved to Paris three years later, speaking little French and in need of a partner, their friendship began in earnest. As Lafayette opened doors in Paris and Versailles for Jefferson, so too did the Virginian stand by Lafayette as the Frenchman became inexorably drawn into the maelstrom of his country's revolution. Jefferson counseled Lafayette as he drafted The Declaration of the Rights of Man and remained a firm supporter of the French Revolution, even after he returned to America in 1789. By 1792, however, the upheaval had rendered Lafayette a man without a country, locked away in a succession of Austrian and Prussian prisons. The burden fell on Jefferson and Lafayette's other friends to win his release. The two would not see each other again until 1824, in a powerful and emotional reunion at Jefferson's Monticello. Steeped in primary sources, Revolutionary Brothers casts fresh light on this remarkable friendship of two extraordinary men.

Whether on the big screen or small, films featuring the American Civil War are among the most classic and controversial in motion picture history. From D. W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation (1915) to Free State of Jones (2016), the war has provided the setting, ideologies, and character archetypes for cinematic narratives of morality, race, gender, and nation, as well as serving as historical education for a century of Americans. In The American Civil War on Film and TV: Blue and Gray in Black and White and Color, Douglas Brode, Shea T. Brode, and Cynthia J. Miller bring together nineteen essays by a diverse array of scholars across the disciplines to explore these issues. The essays included here span a wide range of films, from the silent era to the present day, including Buster Keaton's The General (1926), Red Badge of Courage (1951), Glory (1989), Gettysburg (1993), and Cold Mountain (2003), as well as television mini-series The Blue and The Gray (1982) and John Jakes' acclaimed North and South trilogy (1985-86). As an accessible volume to dedicated to a critical conversation about the Civil War on film, The American Civil War on Film and TV will appeal to not only to scholars of film, military history, American history, and cultural history, but to fans of war films and period films, as well.

In this action-packed history, award-winning author Harlow Giles Unger unfolds the epic story of Patrick Henry, who roused Americans to fight government tyranny--both British and American. Remembered largely for his cry for "liberty or death," Henry was actually the first (and most colorful) of America's Founding Fathers--first to call Americans to arms against Britain, first to demand a bill of rights, and first to fight the growth of big government after the Revolution.

As quick with a rifle as he was with his tongue, Henry was America's greatest orator and courtroom lawyer, who mixed histrionics and hilarity to provoke tears or laughter from judges and jurors alike. Henry's passion for liberty (as well as his very large family), suggested to many Americans that he, not Washington, was the real father of his country.

This biography is history at its best, telling a story both human and philosophical. As Unger points out, Henry's words continue to echo across America and inspire millions to fight government intrusion in their daily lives.

Winner of the 2007 Fraunces Tavern Museum Book Award! Samuel Adams is perhaps the most unheralded and overshadowed of the founding fathers, yet without him there would have been no American Revolution. A genius at devising civil protests and political maneuvers that became a trademark of American politics, Adams astutely forced Britain into coercive military measures that ultimately led to the irreversible split in the empire. His remarkable political career addresses all the major issues concerning America's decision to become a nation -- from the notion of taxation without representation to the Declaration of Independence. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams all acknowledged that they built our nation on Samuel Adams' foundations. Now, in this riveting biography, his story is finally told and his crucial place in American history is fully recognized.

In early America, traditional commercial interaction revolved around an entity known as the general store. Unfortunately, most of these elusive small-town shops disappeared from our society without leaving business-related documents behind for scholars to analyze. This gap in the historical knowledge of America has made it difficult to understand the nature of the networks and trade relationships that existed between cities and the surrounding countryside at the time.

Samuel Rex, however, left behind a vastly different legacy. A country storekeeper who operated out of Schaefferstown, Pennsylvania, during the later eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Rex left a surprising array of documents exposing just how he ran his business. In this book, Diane Wenger analyzes the part Rex and others like him played in the overall commercial structure of the Atlantic region.

While Wenger's book has a strong foundation as a work of local history, it draws conclusions with much broader historical implications. The rich set of documents that Samuel Rex left behind provides a means for contesting the established model of how early American commerce functioned, replacing it with a more fine-grained picture of a society in which market forces and community interests could peacefully coexist.

Owen Wister is known to most Americans as the creator of the heroic cowboy in The Virginian (1902). Despite his success as a Western novelist, Wister's failure to write about his native city of Philadelphia has been lamented by many for the loss of a literary "might-have-been." If only, sighed Wister's contemporary Elizabeth Robins Pennell in 1914, the novelist could understand that Philadelphia was as good a subject as the Wild West. Hence the surprise when James Butler uncovered a substantial fragment of a Philadelphia novel, which Wister intended to call Romney. Here, published for the first time, is the complete fragment of Romney together with two of his other unpublished Philadelphia works.

Even in its incomplete state--nearly fifty thousand words--Romney is Wister's longest piece of fiction after The Virginian and Lady Baltimore. Writing at the express command of his friend Theodore Roosevelt, Wister set Romney in Philadelphia (called Monopolis in the novel) during the 1880s, when, as he saw it, the city was passing from the old to a new order. The hero of the story, Romney, is a man of "no social position" who nonetheless rises to the top because he has superior ability. It is thus a novel about the possibilities for meaningful social change in a democracy. Although, alas, the story breaks off before the birth of Romney, Wister gives us much to savor in the existing thirteen chapters. We are treated to delightful scenes at the Bryn Mawr train station, the Bellevue Hotel, and Independence Square, which yield brilliant insights into life on the Main Line, the power of the Pennsylvania Railroad, and the insidious effects of political corruption.

Wister's acute analysis in Romney of what differentiates Philadelphia and Boston upper classes is remarkably similar to, but anticipates by more than half a century, the classic study by E. Digby Baltzell in Puritan Boston and Quaker Philadelphia (1979). Like Baltzell, Wister analyzes the urban aristocracy of Boston and Philadelphia, finding in Boston a Puritan drive for achievement and civic service but in Philadelphia a Quaker preference for toleration and moderation, all too often leading to acquiescence and stagnation.

Romney is undoubtedly the best fictional portrayal of "Gilded Age" Philadelphia, brilliantly capturing Wister's vision of old-money, aristocratic society gasping its last before the onrushing vulgarity of the nouveaux riches. It is a novel of manners that does for Philadelphia what Edith Wharton and John Marquand have done for New York and Boston.

This pioneering study confronts three main questions about this era in Mexico City: Were women's roles as narrow and unimportant as has been assumed? To what extent were women dominated by men? Can significant differences be found between younger and older women, married and single, upper class and lower class?

At the successful conclusion of the Revolutionary War, America could look back with pride on the accomplishments of the preceding three decades and look forward with excitement and trepidation to the challenges of shaping its new government. It was at this time that influential groups and people emerged and set the course for the young nation. "Shaping of America, 1783-1815" chronicles and illustrates this important period when America forged its place at home and on the international stage.

The two "Biographies "volumes focus on key figures of the time, with significant attention given to minorities and women.