The majestic beauty of Grand Teton National Park has moved people throughout time. Native Americans believed in the spiritual power of the towering mountain peaks and journeyed there to gain special powers. Early fur traders, who had just crossed less ominous mountain ranges, viewed with trepidation the massive obstacle that loomed before them on their passage to the Pacific Northwest. In others, the Tetons ignited vision and passion--a vision to preserve for all generations to come and a passion to protect the independent way of life known by the first settlers of this western frontier. The formation of Grand Teton National Park spanned the course of nearly 70 years. Although there were many people who shared the struggle before them, it was not until Stephen Mather and Horace M. Albright took up the fight in 1915 that steps towards success were taken. Albright's tenacity and ability to convey his vision to philanthropist John D. Rockefeller Jr. set in motion a very long journey that culminated with Pres. Harry S. Truman signing today's Grand Teton National Park into existence on September 13, 1950.

Fueled by the dream to strike it rich, prospectors flocked to California during the gold rush. Yet the harsh lifestyle and backbreaking work led many to early graves. Join author Linda Bottjer on a tour through Gold Country's most chilling--and true--haunted tales. Tales such as the hangman of Placerville, whose distinctive wheeze is a sign of his continued presence. Or the Georgetown miner whose unrequited love for a much younger lady of the night finds him still pining for her in death as he did in life. And in Coloma, the ghost of James Marshall is said to dwell on the lonely hilltop where his cabin and monument now stand. These stories, and many others, capture the ghostly spirit of Gold Country.

In 1907, a young girl was found dead in the Lyric Theatre, leaving behind an unwanted pregnancy and an abusive lover. On an otherwise quiet morning in 1891, a cartful of nitroglycerin exploded. The remains of the driver had to be gathered in a peck basket. The Cannonball Express lived up to its name in 1888, when an open switch caused it to shoot off the track, sending two cars flying. Local journalist A. Parker Burroughs resurrects these and other stories from southwestern Pennsylvania's shadowy past. From foul play at the Burgettstown Fair to the tragic murder of North Franklin's Thelma Young, follow the trail with Burroughs as he uncovers the crimes and intrigues of Washington County.

Gidon Lev, an 89-year-old Holocaust survivor, has lived an extraordinary life. At the age of six, he was imprisoned in the concentration camp of Theresienstadt. Liberated when he was ten, he lost at least 26 members of his family, including his father and grandfather.

But Gidon’s life is extraordinary not only because he is one of the few living survivors remaining but because of his lessons learned over nearly a century. His enduring message is of hope and opportunity – to make things better. By sharing his timeless simple belief and truths, Gidon reminds us that we have the power to incrementally improve what is in front of us and leave something better behind us.

His life is a lesson of how to do it, even in the face of astonishing adversity, and Let’s Make Things Better is the calling card of an indomitable spirit.

How is it that contemporary presidents talk so much and yet say so little, as H. L. Mencken once descibed, like dogs barking idiotically through endless nights? In The Anti-Intellectual Presidency, Elvin Lim tackles this puzzle and argues forcefully that it is because we have been too preoccupied in our search for a Great Communicator, and have failed to take presidents to task for what they communicate to us. Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, he argues, spoke in a qualitatively different style than Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt. Reagan and Clinton merely connected with us; the two Roosevelts educated us. To alert us to the gradual rot of presidential rhetoric, Lim examines two centuries of presidential speeches to demonstrate the relentless and ever-increasing simplificaton of presidential rhetoric. If these trends persist, Lim projects that the State of the Union addresses in the next century could actually read at the fifth-grade level. Lim argues that the ever-increasing tendency for presidents to crowd out argument in presidential rhetoric with applause-rendering platitudes and partisan punch-lines was concertedly implemented by the modern White House. Through a series of interviews with former presidential speechwriters, he shows that the anti-intellectual stance was a deliberate choice rather than a reflection of presidents' intellectual limitations. Only the smart, he suggests, know how to dumb down. Because anti-intellectual rhetoric impedes, rather than facilitates communication and deliberation, Lim warns that we must do something to recondition a political culture so easily seduced by smooth-operating anti-intellectual presidents. Sharplywritten and incisively argued, The Anti-Intellectual Presidency sheds new light on the murky depths of presidential utterances and its consequences for American democracy.

In the swamps and juke joints of Holmes County, Mississippi, Edward Tillman Branch built his empire. Tillman's clubs were legendary. Moonshine flowed as patrons enjoyed craps games and well-know blues acts. Across from his Goodman establishment, prostitutes in a trysting trailer entertained men, including the married Tillman himself. A threat to law enforcement and anyone who crossed his path, Branch rose from modest beginnings to become the ruler of a treacherous kingdom in the hills that became his own end. Author Janice Branch Tracy reveals the man behind the story and the path that led him to become what Honeyboy Edwards referred to in his autobiography as the "baddest white man in Mississippi."

WINNER OF THE 2021 NDR BOOK PRIZE IN GERMANY

'A must-read' Lyndal Roper, Regius Professor of History at Oriel College, Oxford

Fishing quotas on Lake Constance. Common lands in the UK. The medieval answer to Depop in the middle of Frankfurt.

These are all just some of the sustainability initiatives from the Middle Ages that Annette Kehnel illuminates in her astounding new book, The Green Ages. From the mythical-sounding City of Ladies and their garden economy to early microcredit banks and rent-a-cow schemes, Kehnel uncovers a world at odds with what we might think of as the typical medieval existence.

Pre-modern history is full of inspiring examples and concepts that open up new horizons. And we urgently need them as today's challenges - finite resources, the twilight of consumerism, growing inequality - threaten what we have come to think of as a modern way of living sustainably.

This is a revelatory look at the past that has the power to change our future.

Tracing China chronicles forty years of fieldwork. The journey began from exploring rural revolution and reconstitutions of community in South China; it spans decades of persistent rural-urban divide and eventually uncovers China's global reach and Hong Kong's cross-border dynamics. Siu traverses both physical and cultural landscapes, examines how political tumults transform into everyday lives, and fathoms the depths of human drama amid China's frenetic momentum toward modernity. She highlights complicity, portraying how villagers, urbanites, cadres, entrepreneurs, and intellectuals-laden with historical baggage-venture forward. The question is: Have they become victims of the circumstances created by their own actions? The essays are woven together by key themes in historical anthropology-culture, history, power, place-making, and identity formation, informed by critical social theories, and characterized by a careful scrutiny of fieldwork encounters and archival texts. Stressing process and contingency, Siu argues that culture and society are constructed through human actions with nuanced meanings, moral imagination, and contested interests. She challenges the perception that social/political changes are merely linear historical progressions. Instead, she traces layers of the past in present realities.

In The Life and Afterlife of St. Elizabeth of Hungary, Kenneth Baxter Wolf offers a study and translation of the testimony given by witnesses at the canonization hearings of St. Elizabeth of Hungary, who died in 1231 in Marburg, Germany, at the age of twenty-four. The bulk of the depositions were taken from people who claimed to have been healed by the intercession of this new saint. Their descriptions of their maladies and their efforts to secure relief at Elizabeth's shrine in Marburg provide the modern reader not only with a detailed, inside look at the genesis of a saint's cult, but also with an unusually clear window into the lives and hopes of ordinary people living in Germany at the time.
Beyond testimony about her miracles, the papal commissioners also heard witnesses speak to the holiness of Elizabeth's life. Four women who knew Elizabeth from her arrival at the Wartburg castle in Thuringia as the future wife of Landgrave Ludwig IV to her death as a caregiver in the hospital that she founded in Marburg provide vivid vignettes about her life. Together with the testimony of Elizabeth's confessor and guardian, Conrad of Marburg, they capture in words the Hungarian princess's tireless, creative efforts to "cure" her life of privilege with its opposite: a life of voluntary deprivation and direct service to the poor and sick.

The field of American history has undergone remarkable expansion in the past century, all of it reflecting a broadening of the historical enterprise and democratization of its coverage. Today, the shape of the field takes into account the interests, identities, and narratives of more Americans than at any time in its past. Much of this change can be seen through the history of the Organization of American Historians, which, as its mission states, "promotes excellence in the scholarship, teaching, and presentation of American history, and encourages wide discussion of historical questions and equitable treatment of all practitioners of history."
This century-long history of the Organization of American Historians-and its predecessor, the Mississippi Valley Historical Association-explores the thinking and writing by professional historians on the history of the United States. It looks at the organization itself, its founding and dynamic growth, the changing composition of its membership and leadership, the emphasis over the years on teaching and public history, and pedagogical approaches and critical interpretations as played out in association publications, annual conferences, and advocacy efforts. The majority of the book emphasizes the writing of the American story by offering a panorama of the fields of history and their development, moving from long-established ones such as political history and diplomatic history to more recent ones, including environmental history and the history of sexuality

Bounded on the north by the Little Satilla River from neighboring Glynn County and on the east by the Atlantic Ocean, Camden County's southern boundary at the St. Marys River separates Georgia from Florida. Dating from a 1766 land grant, port of St. Marys and Camden County have faced a challenging past, present, and future. Camden's growth and development have been driven by businessmen, adventurers and opportunists, determined "wild swamp Crackers," and hardy, self-reliant, God-fearing men and women.

Accompanied by Jonathan Bryan, a planter with an insatiable appetite for virgin tracts of land, Georgia's third and last Royal Governor James Wright visited Buttermilk Bluff in June 1767 and envisioned a city. St. Marys was born, and its street names reflect the surnames of the 20 founding fathers. While the county seat was removed from a quaint St. Marys on more than one occasion, today, the garden spot of Woodbine serves as the seat of county government. Formerly the rice plantation of J.K. Bedell, this small city shares a symbiotic relationship with port of St. Marys and the "City of Royal Treatment" at Kingsland. The history of the county, with its three main towns as well as the outlying, rural areas, unfolds in striking photographs from days gone by. Preserved within the pages of this treasured volume, images reveal Camden and its people in times of tragedy and triumph.

Winner of the Manfred Lautenschlaeger Award for Theological Promise
Matthew Thiessen offers a nuanced and wide-ranging study of the nature of Jewish thought on Jewishness, circumcision, and conversion. Examining texts from the Hebrew Bible, Second Temple Judaism, and early Christianity, he gives a compelling account of the various forms of Judaism from which the early Christian movement arose.
Beginning with analysis of the Hebrew Bible, Thiessen argues that there is no evidence that circumcision was considered to be a rite of conversion to Israelite religion. In fact, circumcision, particularly the infant circumcision practiced within Israelite and early Jewish society, excluded from the covenant those not properly descended from Abraham. In the Second Temple period, many Jews began to subscribe to a definition of Jewishness that enabled Gentiles to become Jews. Other Jews, such as the author of Jubilees, found this definition problematic, reasserting a strictly genealogical conception of Jewish identity. As a result, some Gentiles who underwent conversion to Judaism in this period faced criticism because of their suspect genealogy.
Thiessen's examination of the way in which Jews in the Second Temple period perceived circumcision and conversion allows a deeper understanding of early Christianity. Contesting Conversion shows that careful attention to a definition of Jewishness that was based on genealogical descent has crucial implications for understanding the variegated nature of early Christian mission to the Gentiles in the first century C.E.

Middle Tennessee State University was founded in 1911 as a two-year training school for teachers and has since evolved through myriad changesain name, in size, in administration, and in academic and athletic resources. Change has also swept through the campus with the ebb and tide of the American climate during some of the twentieth centuryas most turbulent eras, including World Wars I and II, the New Deal period, and the Civil Rights Movement. What has remained steadfast through the years at this revered Tennessee institution is a commitment to excellence, and a faculty, staff, and student body in constant pursuit of the rewards of higher education. Located on a 500-acre campus in Murfreesboro, Middle Tennessee State University boasts a wide array of opportunities for a student population of nearly 20,000. Courses in everything from agriscience to aerospace, from criminal justice to the recording industry offer budding scholars a chance to explore a wide variety of disciplines, while they also enjoy participating in team sports, academic societies, and social organizations. Within
these pages, students, alumni, and friends of the university will travel down memory lane through a unique photographic tribute to the Blue Raiders. Images of dormitories in the 1920s, World War II campus drills, the first Greek organizations, General MacArthuras visit, homecoming floats, band performances, and early sports teams illuminate the schoolas colorful history.

This volume explores the final phase of the West Roman Empire, particularly the changing interactions between the imperial authority and external 'barbarian' groups in the northwest frontiers of the empire during the fourth and fifth centuries. The contributions present valuable overviews of recent archaeological research combined with innovative theoretical discussions. Key topics include the movement of precious metals, trajectories of imperial power, the archaeology of migration, and material culture in relation to debates about ethnicity.

Thomas Walsingham, a monk of St Albans, has been described as the last of the great medieval chroniclers. The St Albans Chronicle is arguably the most important account of English history to be written in England at this time. This volume contains the material which can be shown to have been written by Walsingham himself before 1400, and includes his highly individual account of such episodes as the Peasants' Revolt and the rise of Lollardy. This is the first modern edition, and it provides a facing-page English translation, substantial historical commentary, and textual notes.

‘Beautifully written, sumptuously illustrated, constantly fascinating‘ The Times On 26 November 1922 Howard Carter first peered into the newly opened tomb of an ancient Egyptian boy-king. When asked if he could see anything, he replied: ‘Yes, yes, wonderful things.’ In Tutankhamun’s Trumpet, acclaimed Egyptologist Toby Wilkinson takes a unique approach to that tomb and its contents. Instead of concentrating on the oft-told story of the discovery, or speculating on the brief life and politically fractious reign of the boy king, Wilkinson takes the objects buried with him as the source material for a wide-ranging, detailed portrait of ancient Egypt – its geography, history, culture and legacy. One hundred artefacts from the tomb, arranged in ten thematic groups, are allowed to speak again – not only for themselves, but as witnesses of the civilization that created them. Never before have the treasures of Tutankhamun been analysed and presented for what they can tell us about ancient Egyptian culture, its development, its remarkable flourishing, and its lasting impact. Filled with surprising insights, unusual details, vivid descriptions and, above all, remarkable objects, Tutankhamun’s Trumpet will appeal to all lovers of history, archaeology, art and culture, as well as all those fascinated by the Egypt of the pharaohs. ‘I’ve read many books on ancient Egypt, but I’ve never felt closer to its people‘ The Sunday Times

During the critical Battle of Oriskany in August 1777, Continental forces led by General Nicholas Herkimer defeated the British army under St. Leger in the heart of New York's Mohawk Valley. It was a hard-won victory, but he and his brave troops prevented the British from splitting the colonies in two. Although they did not succeed in relieving the British siege of Fort Stanwix, Herkimer's citizen-soldiers turned back the British and protected Washington's northern flank from attack. The Continental army survived to fight the decisive Battle of Saratoga the next month. Herkimer was mortally wounded, but his heroism and leadership firmly placed him in the pantheon of Revolutionary War heroes. Paul Boehlert presents a gripping account of the events before, during and after this critical battle.

Tennessee's Thirteenth Union Cavalry was a unit composed mostly of amateur soldiers that eventually turned undisciplined boys into seasoned fighters. At the outbreak of the Civil War, East Tennessee was torn between its Unionist tendencies and the surrounding Confederacy. The result was the persecution of the "home Yankees" by Confederate sympathizers. Rather than quelling Unionist fervor, this oppression helped East Tennessee contribute an estimated thirty thousand troops to the North. Some of those troops joined the "Loyal Thirteenth" in Stoneman's raid and in pursuit of Confederate president Jefferson Davis. Join author Melanie Storie as she recounts the harrowing narrative of an often-overlooked piece of Civil War history.

At a time when the French monarchy traced its origins back to ancient Troy, Homeric epic was fated to play a significant political role. Homer came to Renaissance France packaged with an ancient interpretive tradition that made him an authority on all matters but also distinctly separate from Virgil and the Aeneid, rival Italy's foundational myth. Thus, once French humanists learned to read Homer in Greek, they quickly began putting him in the service of their king in order to teach him prudence and amplify his authority. Homer and the Politics of Authority in Renaissance France provides a stimulating perspective on how Homeric authority went from being used by humanists in the role of royal counselors to being exploited by both monarchical and anti-monarchical forces in the service of ideologies, most especially in the Wars of Religion (1562-1598). In turn, French writers of the period transitioned from being monarchical advisors to stirring crowds as actors on the larger political stage. In this study, Marc Bizer not only analyzes a number of works by key authors and humanists-including Michel de Montaigne, Joachim du Bellay, Guillaume Bude, and Jean Dorat, among others- but also examines their poetry, art, pamphlets, and plays. Although there have been several studies of the Homeric legacy in western literature and even in early modern French literature, none has analyzed the political role that Homer played in sixteenth-century France for this circle of important writers. The captivating results of this approach to the post-classical usage of Homer will appeal not only to historians and literary scholars, but also to political scientists, classicists, and art historians."

During the Civil War, Northerners fought each other in elections with almost as much zeal as they fought Southern rebels on the battlefield. Yet politicians and voters alike claimed that partisanship was dangerous in a time of national crisis.
In No Party Now, Adam I. P. Smith challenges the prevailing view that political processes in the North somehow helped the Union be more stable and effective in the war. Instead, Smith argues, early efforts to suspend party politics collapsed in the face of divisions over slavery and the purpose of the war. At the same time, new contexts for political mobilization, such as the army and the avowedly non-partisan Union Leagues, undermined conventional partisan practices. The administration's supporters soon used the power of anti-party discourse to their advantage by connecting their own antislavery arguments to a powerful nationalist ideology. By the time of the 1864 election they sought to de-legitimize partisan opposition with slogans like "No Party Now But All For Our Country!"
No Party Now offers a reinterpretation of Northern wartime politics that challenges the "party period paradigm" in American political history and reveals the many ways in which the unique circumstances of war altered the political calculations and behavior of politicians and voters alike. As Smith shows, beneath the superficial unity lay profound differences about the implications of the war for the kind of nation that the United States was to become.
Finalist, 2007 Peter Seaborg Award for Civil War Scholarship

Come on in to Sumner, Washington, the "Rhubarb Pie Capital of the World." Settled in 1853 after a wagon train daringly crossed the Cascade Mountains through Naches Pass, Sumner quickly grew to become an established town. Find out how Sumner's name was literally drawn out of a hat. Learn about George Ryan's unique method for getting the railroad to stop here. Take a tour down Main Street, and watch how it changed--or didn't--through the decades. See Ryan House when it actually was a farmhouse and the Old Cannery when it was canning fruit. Join in celebrations over the years, from the Daffodil Parade to football championships. Meet schoolchildren, including Clara McCarty Wilt, who became the first graduate of the University of Washington. Follow the work at local industries, from the lumberyards to the fields, where daffodils, berries, and of course, rhubarb were grown.

The Chinese system is like no other known to man, now or in history. This book explains how the system works and where it may be moving. Drawing on Chinese and international sources, on extensive collaboration with Chinese scholars, and on the political science of state analysis, Stein Ringen concludes that under the new leadership of Xi Jinping, the system of government has been transformed into a new regime radically harder and more ideological than the legacy of Deng Xiaoping. China is less strong economically and more dictatorial politically than the world has wanted to believe. By analyzing the leadership of Xi Jinping, the meaning of "socialist market economy," corruption, the party-state apparatus, the reach of the party, the mechanisms of repression, taxation and public services, and state-society relations, The Perfect Dictatorship broadens the field of China studies, as well as the fields of political economy, comparative politics, development, and welfare state studies.

The End of an Elite is the first scholarly study in English of the bishops of the French church at the outbreak of the French Revolution. The 130 members of the episcopate formed an elite within an elite, the First Estate of France. Nigel Aston explores the role of the episcopate in national and provincial politics in the last years of the ancien regime. He traces the policies and patronage of episcopal ministers such as Lomienie de Brienne and J.-M. Champion de Cice, who were as much politicians as pastors, and examines their relationships with their fellow bishops. Dr Aston emphasizes the leading role of the bishops in the Assemblies of Notables and offers a fresh interpretation of clerical elections to the Estates-General of 1789. This is an intensively researched and immensely readable account, which will be invaluable to all historians of late eighteenth-century France.

At the close of the nineteenth century in the Ozark Plateau, lawlessness ruled. Lawmakers, in bed with moonshiners and bootleggers, fueled local crime and turned a blind eye to egregious wrongdoing. In response, a vigilante force emerged from the Ozark hills: the Bald Knobbers. They formed their own laws and alliances; local ministers donned the Knobber mask and brought "justice" to the hills, lynching suspected bootleggers. As community support and interest grew, reporters wrote curious articles about Knobber exploits. Join Vincent S. Anderson as he uncovers these peculiar reports including trials, lovers' spats ending in coldblooded murder and Ozark vigilante history that inspired a folk legend.

In 1871 Mississippi Governor James L. Alcorn recommended that the state legislature support the formation of Alcorn University. The campus of Oakland
College, a school founded by the Presbyterian Church in 1830, had been abandoned after the Civil War and was purchased for forty thousand dollars and designated for the education of black youth. The school became Alcorn Agricultural and Mechanical College in 1878, and Alcorn State University in 1974. In this unique pictorial retrospective, over one hundred years of growth and change at Alcorn are explored and celebrated. Included within these pages are vintage photographs of the students and faculty that have shaped the schoolas history. From early classes and sporting events to distinguished alumni and prominent leaders, the images depict a university continually striving to educate, train, and inspire young African Americans. Alcornas picturesque campus, with moss-draped trees and scenic
lakes, provides a setting where, for over a century, students have been given a multitude of opportunities to grow. The first land-grant institution for blacks in the United States, Alcorn is a public university committed to academic
excellence. The challenges faced by its students and faculty in its earliest days brought forth an unyielding determination to succeed, which is still evident today among its diverse student body.