No longer preoccupied with the East-West divide, contemporary foreign policymakers now have to confront regional conflicts, peace-enforcing and humanitarian missions, and a host of other global problems and issues in areas such as trade, health, and the environment. During the Cold War a widely-shared consensus on national interest and security in the United States and western Europe affected news reporting, public opinion, and foreign policy. But with the end of this Cold War frame of reference, foreign policy making has changed. As we enter the new century, the question is how and to what extent will the new realities of the post-Cold War world_as well as advances in communication technology_influence news reporting, public attitudes, and, most of all, foreign policy decisions on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. In this volume, American and European scholars examine change and continuity in these important aspects of the foreign policy process at the beginning of the 21st century.

""A good story, well told, of a sliver of life in Richmond, a small, elite-driven capital city in the young nation's most influential state.""

--Publishers Weekly

George Wythe clung to the mahogany banister as he inched down the staircase of his comfortable Richmond, Virginia, home. Doubled over in agony, he stumbled to the kitchen in search of help. There he found his maid, Lydia Broadnax, and his young protege, Michael Brown, who were also writhing in distress. Hours later, when help arrived, Wythe was quick to tell anyone who would listen, ""I am murdered."" Over the next two weeks, as Wythe suffered a long and painful death, insults would be added to his mortal injury.

I Am Murdered tells the bizarre true story of Wythe's death and the subsequent trial of his grandnephew and namesake, George Wythe Sweeney, for the crime--unquestionably the most sensational and talked-about court case of the era. Hinging on hit-and-miss forensics, the unreliability of medical autopsies, the prevalence of poisoning, race relations, slavery, and the law, Sweeney's trial serves as a window into early nineteenth- century America. Its particular focus is on Richmond, part elegant state capital and part chaotic boomtown riddled with vice, opportunism, and crime.

As Wythe lay dying, his doctors insisted that he had not been poisoned, and Sweeney had the nerve to beg him for bail money. In I Am Murdered, this signer of the Declaration of Independence, mentor to Thomas Jefferson, and ""Father of American Jurisprudence"" finally gets the justice he deserved.

The Creole Rebellion tells the suspenseful story of a successful mutiny on board the slave ship Creole. En route for a New Orleans slave-auction block in November 1841, nineteen captives mutinied, killing one man and injuring several others. After taking control of the vessel, mutineer Madison Washington forced the crewmen to sail to the Bahamas. Despite much local hysteria upon their arrival, all of the 135 slaves aboard the ship won their freedom there. The revolt significantly fueled and amplified the slave debate within a divided nation that was already hurtling toward a Civil War. While this is a book about the United States confronting the ugly and tumultuous issue of slavery, it is also about the 135 enslaved men and women who were unwilling to take their oppression any longer and rose up to free themselves in a bloody fight. Part history, part adventure, and part legal drama, Bruce Chadwick chronicles the most successful slave revolt in the pages of American history.

During the late nineteenth century, magazines, newspapers, novelists, and even historians presented a revised version of the Civil War that, intending to reconcile the former foes, downplayed the issues of slavery and racial injustice, and often promoted and reinforced the worst racial stereotypes. The Reel Civil War tells the history of how these misrepresentations of history made their way into movies.

More than 800 films have been made about the Civil War. Citing such classics as Birth of a Nation and Gone With the Wind as well as many other films, Bruce Chadwick shows how most of them have, until recently, projected an image of gallant soldiers, beautiful belles, sprawling plantations, and docile or dangerous slaves. He demonstrates how the movies aided and abetted racism and an inaccurate view of American history, providing a revealing and important account of the power of cinema to shape our understanding of historical truth.