Most Americans familiar with General John J. "Black Jack" Pershing know him as the commander of American Expeditionary Forces in Europe during the latter days of World War I. But Pershing was in his late fifties by then. Pershing's military career began in 1886, with his graduation from West Point and his first assignments in the American West as a horsebound cavalry officer during the final days of Apache resistance in the Southwest, where Arizona and New Mexico still represented a frontier of blue-clad soldiers, Native Americans, cowboys, rustlers, and miners. But the Southwest was just the beginning of Pershing's West. He would see assignments over the years in the Dakotas, during the Ghost Dance uprising and the battle of Wounded Knee; a posting at Montana's Fort Assiniboine; and, following his years in Asia, a return to the West with a posting at the Presidio in San Francisco and a prolonged assignment on the Mexican-American border in El Paso, which led to his command of the Punitive Expedition, tasked with riding deep into Northern Mexico to capture the pistolero Pancho Villa. During those thirty years from West Point to the Western Front, Pershing had a colorful and varied military career, including action during the Spanish-American War and lengthy service in the Philippines. Both were new versions of the American frontier abroad, even as the frontier days of the American West were closing. All of Pershing's experiences in the American West prepared himfor his ultimate assignment as the top American commander during the Great War. If the American frontier and, more broadly, the American West provided a cauldron in which Americans tested themselves during the nineteenth century, the same is true for John Pershing. His story is a historical Western.

Since his military school days, Robert E. Lee excelled as a soldier. He was the first cadet to receive the rank of sergeant while at West Point, where he graduated at the head of his class in artillery and tactics, and ranked second in his class overall. Lee continued his distinguished military career, and was asked by Abraham Lincoln to take control of the entire Union army against the Confederates. Instead, he fought for his native Virginia out of loyalty during the Civil War. After surrendering to Ulysses S. Grant of the North in Appomattox Court House, Virginia, Lee supported reconciliation between North and South. He became known as the great Southern hero of the war, and his popularity grew in the North as well after his death in 1870. Today, Lee is remembered for his character and his devotion to duty, and he remains an iconic figure of American military leadership.

Between the opening of the French Revolution in 1789 and the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, Spanish artist Francisco Goya painted what he saw around him, everything from peasants to priests, majas to monarchs, courtesans to country folk. Goya's Spain was a nation struggling to enter the modern world, even as it tolerated inept kings, scheming queens, and militaristic prime ministers. In time, revolutionary ideas and a spirit of liberalism spread across the Spanish landscape, providing Goya with fresh subjects and a new approach to art, embodied in this same spirit - Romanticism. But Goya also had a darker side, one that would forever haunt him, not only during his lifetime, but also in the artistic legacy he left behind. In ""Francisco Goya"", learn about this early 19th-century artist who painted against the backdrop of European conflict.

He was born in New York City, and he died in New York City. But Tito Puente would live his life as a Puerto Rican who would become one of the greatest Hispanic-American musicians of the 20th century. During the 1940s and 1950s, American music experienced some of its most significant changes. The separate worlds of jazz, swing, and Latin music came together to take on new forms and styles, resulting in a music that created a beat and syncopation that brought countless thousands of frenetic fans to the dance floors and night clubs of the Big Apple. Puente led the way in this transition of the American music scene as a songwriter, arranger, big bandleader, and unrivaled musician. He pounded out rhythms on the timbales with an incredible intensity and soul, a combination that won him the hearts of his admirers, those who were drawn in by the ecstatic lure of his style of Afro-Cuban music. In ""Tito Puente"", read about this energetic six-time Grammy Award winner.

On a muggy summer day in 1892, an unassuming, well-dressed shoemaker from New Orleans named Homer Plessy bought a first-class ticket from the East Louisiana Railroad and boarded a passenger car designated ""whites only."" But Plessy's journey was soon derailed. By day's end, he'd been arrested and convicted. His crime? Being black and boarding the wrong railroad car. Plessy's act of defiance constituted a violation of the state's separate-car law, a statute designed to keep the races separated on Louisiana's public transportation systems. Over the next four years, his case would work its way through the legal system until it landed on the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court. To Plessy supporters, the case served as a signpost for America's future. Would ""Jim Crow"" statutes continue to define black and white relations in the approaching 20th century? Or would blacks be able to taste new freedom? ""Plessy v. Ferguson"" sets the scene for this benchmark case with solid background information and lively biographies of those involved. Full-color photographs, detailed footnotes, and a chronology and timeline help put the proceedings in context.

What happens when a state board prescribes a prayer for public school children to recite in every classroom each morning as part of its program of ""moral and spiritual training""? This question faced the U.S. Supreme Court in 1962 when they heard arguments in Engel v. Vitale. What some observers considered to be nothing more than a school tradition became the basis of a key constitutional question dealing with religious freedom and the meaning of separation of church and state in the United States. ""Engel v. Vitale"" serves as a useful primer of an issue that remains an emotionally charged one today. Combining absorbing profiles of key litigants with carefully selected full-color photographs, extensive footnotes, and a chronology and timeline, historian Shane Mountjoy provides excellent coverage of this decisive case.