The Nevada Test Site As Ground Zero of 1950s American Culture
Cultural scholar John Wills takes readers on a cultural tour of Doom Town, USA, designed to be the model 1950s American city and destroyed by an atomic bomb on live television to educate Americans on the need to prepare for possible nuclear war-but also to sell new products in the emerging postwar economic boom. In March 1953 and May 1955, ......
The Forgotten Voice of a Farm Woman Through Dust, Depression, and War
A daily farm diary that shows a woman who was unbelievably hard-working, a shrewd manager of her farm and home, steadfast in the face of pain and adversity, and both fiercely independent and strongly connected to a supportive community. This is a remarkable account of an average life. These published diaries of Louisa "Lulu" Ehrlichs Schwanbeck ......
The inspiring story of Lyda Conley, the first Indigenous woman to argue a case before the United States Supreme Court and a trailblazing lawyer and activist who defended the burials of her Wyandot family and ancestors in Kansas City's Huron Indian Cemetery. Driven by primary sources and oral histories, this biography and source reader is the ......
An American officer offers an explosive memoir from inside coalition headquarters in Baghdad. With raw honesty and exhilarating detail, Tom Mowle shares how policy and strategy were built at a time when it still felt like the US could win the Iraq War. When Tom Mowle volunteered to go to Iraq in 2004 to help shape American strategy, he left ......
An insightful and nuanced examination of a controversial and consequential presidency, written by some of the top presidential scholars in the nation. It was the election result that shocked the world. In November 2016, Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton to become the forty-fifth president of the United States, thereby bringing an end to ......
How Congress Suppresses Constitutional Rights After Wars
A sobering and eyeopening indictment that Congress has consistently been the most dangerous branch of government when it comes to protecting, and undermining, civil liberties-particularly in the wake of military conflict. Why do wartime restrictions on civil liberties outlive their original justifications? Scholars have long argued that the ......
Soldiers Who Refused to Fight in the American Civil War
From renowned Civil War historian Earl J. Hess comes a study of Union and Confederate soldiers as never seen before. Shattered Courage examines the experience of the men who refused to fight on the day of battle. When Abraham Lincoln took the oath of presidential office on March 4, 1865, he urged the country to care for those "who shall have ......
1992, 1996, and the Birth of a New Era of Governance
In the presidential elections of 1980, 1984, and 1988, the three Democratic nominees won an average of about 10 percent of the Electoral College vote-a smaller share than any party in any three consecutive presidential elections in US history. In the next seven elections, Democrats won the popular vote in all but one (2004), a feat not achieved by ......
All-American City investigates the recent history of Wichita, Kansas, and illuminates the challenges-and opportunities-facing midsize cities throughout the nation. Distinctive. Unique. Authentic. These were the watchwords in the 2020 campaign to revitalize Wichita, Kansas, and to set it apart in the perpetual competition among American urban ......
