As war raged on the battlefields of the Civil War, men and women all over the nation continued their daily routines. They celebrated holidays, ran households, wrote letters, read newspapers, joined unions, attended plays, and graduated from high school and college. Civil War America reveals how Americans, both Northern and Southern, lived during the Civil War the ways they worked, expressed themselves artistically, organized their family lives, treated illness, and worshipped.

Written by specialists, the chapters in this book cover the war s impact on the economy, the role of the federal government, labor, welfare and reform efforts, the Indian nations, universities, healthcare and medicine, news coverage, photography, and a host of other topics that flesh out the lives of ordinary Americans who just happened to be living through the biggest conflict in American history. Along with the original material presented in the book chapters, the website accompanying the book is a treasure trove of primary sources, both textual and visual, keyed for each chapter topic.

Civil War America and its companion website uncover seismic shifts in the cultural and social landscape of the United States, providing the perfect addition to any course on the Civil War.

As war raged on the battlefields of the Civil War, men and women all over the nation continued their daily routines. They celebrated holidays, ran households, wrote letters, read newspapers, joined unions, attended plays, and graduated from high school and college. Civil War America reveals how Americans, both Northern and Southern, lived during the Civil War-the ways they worked, expressed themselves artistically, organized their family lives, treated illness, and worshipped. Written by specialists, the chapters in this book cover the war's impact on the economy, the role of the federal government, labor, welfare and reform efforts, the Indian nations, universities, healthcare and medicine, news coverage, photography, and a host of other topics that flesh out the lives of ordinary Americans who just happened to be living through the biggest conflict in American history. Along with the original material presented in the book chapters, the website accompanying the book is a treasure trove of primary sources, both textual and visual, keyed for each chapter topic. Civil War America and its companion website uncover seismic shifts in the cultural and social landscape of the United States, providing the perfect addition to any course on the Civil War.

Though he was a recipient of both the Pulitzer Prize and the Nobel Prize for Literature, American novelist John Steinbeck (1902--1968) has frequently been censored. Even in the twenty-first century, nearly ninety years after his work first appeared in print, Steinbeck's novels, stories, and plays still generate controversy: his 1937 book Of Mice and Men was banned in some Mississippi schools in 2002, and as recently as 2009, he made the American Library Association's annual list of most frequently challenged authors. A Political Companion to John Steinbeck examines the most contentious political aspects of the author's body of work, from his early exploration of social justice and political authority during the Great Depression to his later positions regarding domestic and international threats to American policies. Featuring contemporaneous and present-day interpretations of his novels and essays by historians, literary scholars, and political theorists, this book covers the spectrum of Steinbeck's writing, exploring everything from his place in American political culture to his seeming betrayal of his leftist principles in later years.

Commemorating the bicentennial of Frederick Douglass's birthday and featuring images discovered since its original publication in 2015, this "tour de force" (Library Journal, starred review) reintroduced Frederick Douglass to a twenty-first-century audience. From these pages-which include over 160 photographs of Douglass, as well as his previously unpublished writings and speeches on visual aesthetics-we learn that neither Custer nor Twain, nor even Abraham Lincoln, was the most photographed American of the nineteenth century. Indeed, it was Frederick Douglass, the ex-slave-turned-abolitionist, eloquent orator, and seminal writer, who is canonized here as a leading pioneer in photography and a prescient theorist who believed in the explosive social power of what was then just an emerging art form. Featuring: Contributions from Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Kenneth B. Morris, Jr. (a direct Douglass descendent) 160 separate photographs of Douglass-many of which have never been publicly seen and were long lost to history A collection of contemporaneous artwork that shows how powerful Douglass's photographic legacy remains today, over a century after his death All Douglass's previously unpublished writings and speeches on visual aesthetics

Written by the world's leading experts and campaigners, Modern Slavery: A Beginner's Guide blends original research with shocking first-hand accounts from slaves themselves around the world to reveal the truth behind one of the worst humanitarian crises facing us today. Only a handful of slaves are reached and freed each year, but the authors offer hope for the future with a global blueprint that proposes to end slavery in our lifetime All royalties will go to Free the Slaves.

Boys strapped to carpet looms in India, women trafficked into sex slavery across Europe, children born into bondage in Mauritania, and migrants imprisoned at gunpoint in the United States are just a few of the many forms slavery takes in the twenty-first century. There are twenty-seven million slaves alive today, more than at any point in history, and they are found on every continent in the world except Antarctica.

To Plead Our Own Cause contains ninety-five narratives by slaves and former slaves from around the globe. Told in the words of slaves themselves, the narratives movingly and eloquently chronicle the horrors of contemporary slavery, the process of becoming free, and the challenges faced by former slaves as they build a life in freedom. An editors' introduction lays out the historical, economic, and political background to modern slavery, the literary tradition of the slave narrative, and a variety of ways we can all help end slavery today.

Halting the contemporary slave trade is one of the great human-rights issues of our time. But just as slavery is not over, neither is the will to achieve freedom, "plead" the cause of liberation, and advocate abolition. Putting the slave's voice back at the heart of the abolitionist movement, To Plead Our Own Cause gives occasion for both action and hope.

Though he was a recipient of both the Pulitzer Prize and the Nobel Prize for Literature, American novelist John Steinbeck (1902--1968) has frequently been censored. Even in the twenty-first century, nearly ninety years after his work first appeared in print, Steinbeck's novels, stories, and plays still generate controversy: his 1937 book Of Mice and Men was banned in some Mississippi schools in 2002, and as recently as 2009, he made the American Library Association's annual list of most frequently challenged authors. A Political Companion to John Steinbeck examines the most contentious political aspects of the author's body of work, from his early exploration of social justice and political authority during the Great Depression to his later positions regarding domestic and international threats to American policies. Featuring contemporaneous and present-day interpretations of his novels and essays by historians, literary scholars, and political theorists, this book covers the spectrum of Steinbeck's writing, exploring everything from his place in American political culture to his seeming betrayal of his leftist principles in later years.

"I like a little rebellion now and then"--so wrote Thomas Jefferson to Abigail Adams, enlisting in a tradition that throughout American history has led writers to rage and reason, prophesy and provoke. This is the first anthology to collect and examine an American literature that holds the nation to its highest ideals, castigating it when it falls short and pointing the way to a better collective future.

"American Protest Literature" presents sources from eleven protest movements--political, social, and cultural--from the Revolution to abolition to gay rights to antiwar protest. Each section reprints documents from the original phase of the movement as well as evidence of its legacy in later times. Informative headnotes place the selections in historical context and draw connections with other writings within the anthology and beyond. Sources include a wide variety of genres--pamphlets, letters, speeches, sermons, legal documents, poems, short stories, photographs, posters--and a range of voices from prophetic to outraged to sorrowful, from U.S. Presidents to the disenfranchised. Together they provide an enlightening and inspiring survey of this most American form of literature.

When John Brown led twenty-one men in an attack on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry on October 16, 1859, he envisioned a biblical uprising of millions of armed bondsmen, thus ridding the nation of the scourge of slavery. The insurrection did not happen, and Brown and the other surviving raiders were quickly captured and executed. This landmark anthology, which collects contemporary speeches, letters, newspaper articles, journals, poems, and songs, demonstrates that Brown’s actions nonetheless altered the course of American history. John Stauffer and Zoe Trodd have assembled an impressive and wide-ranging collection of responses to Brown’s raid: Brown’s own words, northern and southern reactions, international commentary, and reflections from the Civil War and Reconstruction era. Represented here are all the figures one would expect to see (Lincoln, Thoreau, Frederick Douglass), many surprises (John Wilkes Booth, Karl Marx, Giuseppe Garibaldi), as well as free and enslaved blacks and white citizens. The result is a book that views Brown from multiple vantage points. The Introduction describes the panic that Harpers Ferry created in the South, splitting the Democratic Party along sectional lines and altering the outcome of the 1860 presidential election. Without Brown, it speculates, the Civil War and emancipation would have been delayed by another four years—probably more—which in turn might have disrupted emancipation movements in Brazil, Cuba, and even Russia. The Tribunal is essential reading for anyone interested in the Civil War era and the history of social protest movements.

Boys strapped to carpet looms in India, women trafficked into sex slavery across Europe, children born into bondage in Mauritania, and migrants imprisoned at gunpoint in the United States are just a few of the many forms slavery takes in the twenty-first century. There are twenty-seven million slaves alive today, more than at any point in history, and they are found on every continent in the world except Antarctica.

To Plead Our Own Cause contains ninety-five narratives by slaves and former slaves from around the globe. Told in the words of slaves themselves, the narratives movingly and eloquently chronicle the horrors of contemporary slavery, the process of becoming free, and the challenges faced by former slaves as they build a life in freedom. An editors' introduction lays out the historical, economic, and political background to modern slavery, the literary tradition of the slave narrative, and a variety of ways we can all help end slavery today.

Halting the contemporary slave trade is one of the great human-rights issues of our time. But just as slavery is not over, neither is the will to achieve freedom, "plead" the cause of liberation, and advocate abolition. Putting the slave's voice back at the heart of the abolitionist movement, To Plead Our Own Cause gives occasion for both action and hope.

Frederick Douglass's fiery speeches made him one of the most renowned and popular agitators of his age. Now, as a result of ground-breaking research, we can reclaim the ex-slave and abolitionist as a pioneer in photography, both as a subject and as a theorist. Included here are 160 photographs of Douglass-many which have never been publicly seen-combined with previously unpublished writings and speeches on visual aesthetics. The result transforms our understanding of photography and its place in the life and legacy of Douglass.