In 1909, young William F. Buckley Sr. (1881-1958), who grew up in the dusty South Texas town of San Diego, graduated from the University of Texas law school and headed for Mexico City. Fluent in Spanish, familiar with Mexican traditions, and soon fit to practice law south of the border, Buckley was headed up the aisle to vast wealth and cultural ......
Orchards and the Development of Industrial Agriculture
In the nineteenth century, most American farms had a small orchard or at least a few fruit-bearing trees. People grew their own apple trees or purchased apples grown within a few hundred miles of their homes. Nowadays, in contrast, Americans buy mass-produced fruit in supermarkets, and roughly 70 percent of apples come from Washington State. So ......
Although the American bison was saved from near-extinction in the nineteenth century, today almost all herds are managed like livestock. The Yellowstone area is the only place in the United States where wild bison have been present since before the first Euro-Americans arrived. But these bison pose risks to property and people when they roam ......
For travelers passing through northern Navajo country, the desert landscape appears desolate. The few remaining Navajo trading posts, once famous for their bustling commerce, seem unimpressive. Yet a closer look at the economic and creative activity in this region, which straddles northeastern Arizona, northwestern New Mexico, and southeastern ......
How civil liberties triumphed over national insecurity Between the two major red scares of the twentieth century, a police raid on a Communist Party bookstore in Oklahoma City marked an important lesson in the history of American freedom. In a raid on the Progressive Bookstore in 1940, local officials seized thousands of books and pamphlets and ......
Outstanding in appearance, discipline, and precision at drill, the Third Minnesota Volunteer Infantry was often mistaken for a regular army unit. Rebel Colonel Ponder described the regiment as "the hardest lot of men he'd ever run against." Betrayed by its higher commanders, the Third Minnesota was surrendered to Nathan Bedford Forrest on July 13, ......
There's "western", and then there's "Western" - and where history becomes myth is an evocative question, one of several questions posed by Josh Garrett-Davis in What Is a Western? Region, Genre, Imagination. Part cultural criticism, part history, and wholly entertaining, this series of essays on specific films, books, music, and other cultural ......
Prudentius (b. 348 c.e.), one of the greatest Latin poets of late antiquity, was also a devoted Christian. His allegorical masterpiece, Psychomachia, combines epic language and theological speculation to offer a powerful vision of Roman and Christian triumphalism. Yet this important work - one of the most popular and influential poems of the ......
For the ancient and modern Maya, the landscape is ruled by powerful entities in the form of geographic features like caves, mountains, springs, and abandoned cities - spirits who must be entreated, through visits and rituals, for permission to plant, harvest, build, or travel their territories. Consequently, such places have served as points of ......
