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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.
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