History

An account of the chaotic months between Lincoln's election and the Confederacy's shelling of Fort Sumter, a period marked by tragic errors and miscommunications, enflamed egos and craven ambitions, personal tragedies and betrayals. At the heart of this narrative are Major Robert Anderson, Sumter's commander and a former slave owner sympathetic to the South but loyal to the Union; Edmund Ruffin, a vain and bloodthirsty radical who stirs secessionist ardor at every opportunity; and Mary Boykin Chesnut, wife of a prominent planter, conflicted over both marriage and slavery and seeing parallels between them. In the middle of it all is the overwhelmed Lincoln, battling with his duplicitous secretary of state, William Seward, as he tries desperately to avert a war that he fears is inevitable, one that will eventually kill 750,000 Americans. Drawing on diaries, secret communiques, slave ledgers, and plantation records, Larson gives us a political horror story.

During the 20th century, one building-the octagonal stacked-log hogan-emerged to become a powerful and inspiring symbol of Diné culture. This book describes the rise of the octagonal stacked-log hogan as the most important architectural form among the Diné. This book explains how a specific hogan form-the octagonal stacked-log hogan-emerged as a powerful and inspiring symbol of Diné culture.

Historical narratives often concentrate on wars and politics while omitting the central role and influence of the physical stage on which history is carried out. In Losing Eden, Sara Dant debunks the myth of the American West as "Eden" and instead embraces a more realistic and complex understanding of a region that has been inhabited and altered by people for tens of thousands of years. In this lively narrative Dant discusses the key events and topics in the environmental history of the American West, from the Beringia migration, Columbian Exchange, and federal territorial acquisition to post-World War II expansion, resource exploitation, and current climate change issues. Losing Eden is structured around three important themes: balancing economic success and ecological destruction, creating and protecting public lands, and achieving sustainability.

The most enduring feature of U.S. history is the presence of Native Americans, yet most histories focus on Europeans and their descendants. This practice of ignoring Indigenous history is changing, however, as a new generation of scholars insists that any full American history address the struggle, survival, and resurgence of American Indian nations. Indigenous history is essential to understanding the evolution of modern America. Ned Blackhawk interweaves five centuries of Native and non-Native histories, from Spanish colonial exploration to the rise of Native American self-determination in the late twentieth century.

Historian Matthew Connelly analyzes the millions of state documents both accessible to the public and still under review to unearth not only what the government does not want us to know, but what it says about the very authority we bequeath to our leaders. By culling this research and studying a series of pivotal moments in recent history from Pearl Harbor to drone strikes, Connelly sheds light on the drivers of state secrecy (especially consolidating power or hiding incompetence) and how the classification of documents has become untenable.

From whiskey in the American Revolution to Spam in WWII, food reveals a great deal about the society in which it exists. Selecting 15 foods that represent key moments in the history of the United States, this book takes readers from before European colonization to the present, narrating major turning points along the way, with food as a guide.

rom ancient metropolises like Pueblo Bonito and Tenochtitlán to the twenty-first century Oceti Sakowin encampment of NoDAPL water protectors, Native people have built and lived in cities--a fact little noted in either urban or Indigenous histories. By foregrounding Indigenous peoples as city makers and city dwellers, as agents and subjects of urbanization, the essays in this volume simultaneously highlight the impact of Indigenous people on urban places and the effects of urbanism on Indigenous people and politics.

A landmark new history of the peasant experience, exploring a now neglected way of life that once encompassed most of humanity but is vanishing in our time. For over the past century and a half, and still more rapidly in the last seventy years, the world has become increasingly urban, and the peasant way of life--the dominant way of life for humanity since agriculture began well over 6,000 years ago--is disappearing. In this new history of peasantry, social historian Patrick Joyce aims to tell the story of this lost world and its people, and how we can commemorate their way of life.

History has been a source of cultural fascination since ancient times, however little attention has been paid to its potential as a positive force for health and wellbeing, at least until now. Presenting the benefits of historical engagement, and practical tips for making the most of it, Anna Greenwood considers the power this discipline has to spur better health outcomes by deepening sympathies, broadening imaginations, and creating community beyond the customary restrictions of time and geography.

A history of clothing and the stuff it is made of, a deep-dive into how everyday garments have transformed our lives, our societies, and our planet. Sofi Thanhauser tells five stories--Linen, Cotton, Silk, Synthetics, Wool--about the clothes we wear and where they come from, illuminating our world in unexpected ways.

Everywhen is a groundbreaking collection about diverse ways of conceiving, knowing, and narrating time and deep history. Looking beyond the linear documentary past of Western or academic history, this collection asks how knowledge systems of Australia's Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders can broaden our understandings of the past and of historical practice. Indigenous embodied practices for knowing, narrating, and reenacting the past in the present blur the distinctions of linear time, making all history now. Ultimately, questions of time and language are questions of Indigenous sovereignty.

Examining material and cultural representations of the cosmonaut program, Cathleen Lewis discusses how the public image of the Soviet cosmonaut developed beginning in the 1950s and the ways this icon has been reinterpreted throughout the years and in contemporary Russia.

More than just newspapers, television, and social networks, media are best understood as the means by which any information is communicated, from cosmic radiation traces to medieval church bells to modern identity documents. Cultures are held together as much by bookkeeping and records as they are by stories and myths. From Big Bang to Big Data is a long history of the media--how it has been established, used, and transformed from the beginning of recorded time until the present. It is not primarily a story of revolutions and innovations, but of continuities and overlaps that reveal surprising patterns across history.

A major history of Afghanistan and its changing political culture. Afghanistan traces the historic struggles and the changing nature of political authority in this volatile region of the world, from the Mughal Empire in the sixteenth century to the Taliban resurgence today. Thomas Barfield introduces readers to the bewildering diversity of tribal and ethnic groups in Afghanistan, explaining what unites them as Afghans despite the regional, cultural, and political differences that divide them.