Spurred by the Gold Rush of 1859, settlers of diverse backgrounds and nationalities trekked to Colorado and began building towns. Existing accounts of their struggles and those of townbuilders throughout the American West focus on boom-or-bust economics, rampant boosterism, and bitter social conflicts. This, according to sociologist Richard Hogan, ......
Much of the world today views America as an imperialist nation bent on global military, economic, and cultural domination. At home few share this negative view, largely because of a widespread belief in the irreproachable purity of our goals. Bob Pepperman Taylor, however, argues that our moral self-righteousness may potentially imperil our ......
As the United States transformed itself from an agricultural to an industrial nation, thousands of young people left farm homes for life in the big city. But even by 1920 the nation's heartland remained predominantly rural and most children in the region were still raised on farms. Pamela Riney-Kehrberg retells their stories, offering ......
The essential biography of Charles Evans Hughes, whose indelible career in politics and law shaped American modernization in the twentieth century.In the first full-life biographical study of Charles Evans Hughes in over seventy years, Joanne Reitano provides a fresh assessment of Hughes's distinguished, multifaceted public service during 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 ......
Harvesting and Threshing on the North American Plains
Bull Threshers and Bindlestiffs is a panorama on a continental canvas: the Great Plains of North America, stretching from Texas to Alberta. Onto this surface the author lays the large features of regional practice in the harvesting and threshing of wheat during the days before the combined harvester-harvesting with binder and header, threshing ......
British Military Assistance and African Independence
During the Cold War the British government oversaw the transition to independence of dozens of colonies. Often the most challenging aspect of this transition was the creation of a national army from colonial forces. In Built on the Ruins of Empire, Blake Whitaker examines this process in Kenya and Zambia and how it set the course for the creation ......
Black GIs, Military Labor, and the Fight for Equality in World War II
The previously overlooked story of how the labor of Black GIs helped win the war and advanced racial integration in the US armed forces.More than 80 percent of Black GIs in World War II served behind the front lines. At the beginning of the war, segregation policies maintained physical separation of Black and white GIs and only allowed Black ......
Has Texas always been one of the United States' most conservative states? The answer might surprise you. Bootstrap Liberalism offers a glimpse into the world of Depression-era Texas politics, revealing a partisan culture that was often far more ideologically nuanced and complex than meets the eye. The Lone Star State is often viewed as a bastion ......
