Bücher veröffentlicht von University Press of Kansas

One was a robust charmer given to fits of passion, whose physical appeal could captivate women as easily as cajole colleagues. The other was a frail, melancholy man of quiet intellect, whose ailments drove him eventually to alcohol and drug addiction. Born into different social classes, they were as opposite as men could be. Yet these sons of Georgia, Robert Toombs and Alexander H. Stephens, became fast friends and together changed the course of the South. Writing with the style and authority that has made him one of our most popular historians of the Civil War, William C. Davis has written a biography of a friendship that captures the Confederacy in microcosm. He tells how Toombs and Stephens dominated the formation of the new nation and served as its vice president and secretary of state. After years of disillusionment, each abandoned participation in the government and left to its own fate a Confederacy that would not dance to their tune. Davis traces this unlikely relationship from its early days in the Georgia legislature through the trials of secession and war, revealing how both men persevered during the war and developed a deep animosity for Jefferson Davis. He then chronicles their postwar lives up to the emotional moment when Toombs stood eulogizing his long-time friend at his funeral, just four months after Stephens was elected governor of the Georgia they had loved as much as one another. Drawing extensively on primary sources, including Stephens's voluminous letters and Toombs' widely scattered papers, Davis tells how two men of different temperaments remained friends, out of step with all but a few and occasionally even with each other. He concentrates on their Confederate years, when the fraternity they shared had its greatest impact, to show how they embodied both the strengths and the weaknesses of the Confederacy. While there are biographies of each man, none convey the significance--or the depth--of their friendship. Davis shows us how they loved the South as it once was, the Union as they thought it ought to have been, and the Confederacy of their dreams that never came to be. They lost all three, but through five decades of crisis, they never failed each other.

Drug and alcohol education in public schools may be important, but its authoritarian stance often invites skepticism among teachers and students alike. Yet this program has its roots not in modern bureaucracy or even Prohibition but in a social movement that flourished over a century ago. Scientific Temperance Instruction was the most successful grassroots education program in American history, championed by an army of housewives in the Woman's Christian Temperance Union under the leadership of Mary Hanchett Hunt. As Hunt and her forces took their message across the country, they were opposed by many educators and other professionals who believed that ordinary citizens had no business interfering with educational matters. STI sparked heated conflict between expert and popular authority in the debate over alcohol education, but it was eventually mandated as part of public school curricula in all states. The real issue surrounding STI, argues Jonathan Zimmerman, was not alcohol but the struggle to reconcile democracy and expertise. In this first book-length study of the crusade for STI, he shows Mary Hunt to be a wily and manipulative politician as he examines how citizens and experts used knowledge selectively to advance their own agendas. His work offers a microcosm for observing Progressive Era tensions between democracy and professionalism, localism and centralization, and social conservatism and liberalism. Distilling Democracy points up a crucial and ongoing dilemma in our education system: educational directives handed down by experts deny citizens the right to transmit their values to their children, while populist educational values sometimes stifle classroom debate. By using history to demonstrate the public's participation in shaping public education, Zimmerman suggests that however unappealing the program, society needs to embrace such popular movements in order to uphold true democracy. His book offers fresh insight into an overlooked chapter in our history and will spark debate by raising fresh questions about lay influence on school curricula in modern America.

JFK tagged him Mr. Social Security. LBJ praised him as the planner, architect, builder and repairman on every major piece of social legislation [since 1935]. The New York Times called him one of the country's foremost technicians in public welfare. Time portrayed him as a man of boundless energy, infectious enthusiasm, and a drive for action. His name was Wilbur Cohen. For half a century from the New Deal through the Great Society, Cohen (1913-1987) was one of the key players in the creation and expansion of the American welfare state. From the Social Security Act of 1935 through the establishment of disability insurance in 1956 and the creation of Medicare in 1965, he was a leading articulator and advocate of an expanding Social Security system. He played that role so well that he prompted Senator Paul Douglas's wry comment that an expert on Social Security is a person who knows Wilbur Cohen's telephone number. The son of Jewish immigrants, Cohen left his Milwaukee home in the early 1930s to attend the University of Wisconsin and never looked back. Filled with a great thirst for knowledge and wider horizons, he followed his mentors Edwin Witte and Arthur Altmeyer to Washington, D.C., and began a career that would eventually land him a top position in LBJ's cabinet as Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare. Variously described as a practical visionary, an action intellectual, a consummate bureaucrat, and a relentless incrementalist, Cohen was a master behind-the-scenes player who turned legislative compromise into an art form. He inhabited a world in which the passage of legislation was the ultimate reward. Driven by his progressive vision, he time and again persuaded legislators on both sides of the aisle to introduce and support expansive social programs. Like a shuttle in a loom he moved invisibly back and forth, back and forth, until the finely woven legislative cloth emerged before the public's eye. Nearly a decade after his death, Cohen and his legacy continue to shadow the debates over social welfare and health care reform. While Congress swings with the prevailing winds in these debates, Social Security's prominence in American life remains vitally intact. And Wilbur Cohen is largely responsible for that.

If you think your job is hopelessly difficult, you may be right. Particularly if your job is public administration. Those who study or practice public management know full well the difficulties faced by administrators of complex bureaucratic systems. What they don't know is why some jobs in the public sector are harder than others and how good managers cope with those jobs. Drawing on leadership theory and social psychology, Erwin Hargrove and John Glidewell provide the first systematic analysis of the factors that determine the inherent difficulty of public management jobs and of the coping strategies employed by successful managers. To test their argument, Hargrove and Glidewell focus on those jobs fraught with extreme difficulties--"impossible" jobs. What differentiates impossible from possible jobs are (1) the publicly perceived legitimacy of the commissioner's clientele; (2) the intensity of the conflict among the agency's constituencies; (3) the public's confidence in the authority of the commissioner's profession; and (4) the strength of the agency's "myth," or long-term, idealistic goal. Hargrove and Glidewell flesh out their analysis with six case studies that focus on the roles played by leaders of specific agencies. Each essay summarizes the institutional strengths and weaknesses, specifies what makes the job impossible, and then compares the skills and strategies that incumbents have employed in coping with such jobs. Readers will come away with a thorough understanding of the conflicting social, psychological, and political forces that act on commissioners in impossible jobs.

In this sensitive and revealing biography, Joseph Herring explores Kenekuk's rise to power and astute leadership, as well as tracing the evolution of his policy of acculturation. This strategy proved highly effective in protecting Kenekuk's people against the increasingly complex, intrusive, and hostile white world.

William Scully, an Irishman who was a member of the lesser landed gentry, put his life's energy into the accumulation of high-quality, low-cost land. Homer Socolofsky's biography, the product of more than thirty years of research, provides a narrative and analysis of Scully's activities as an investor in both Ireland and the United States.

At a time of bitter political polarization and partisanship, Sam Nunn's reputation remains that of a statesman with a record of bipartisanship and a dedication to US national interests above all. His career provides both a valuable lesson in the relationships among the US government, foreign powers, and societies.

Moving deftly between the battlefield and the halls of power, Allan Millett weaves together military operations and tactics without losing sight of Cold War geopolitics, strategy, and civil-military relations. His book is the first to give combined arms its due, looking at the challenges of integrating naval and air power with ground forces.

A groundbreaking account of the Soviet Air Force in World War II, the original version of this book was hailed by the Washington Post as both 'brilliant' and 'monumental'. That version has now been completely overhauled in the wake of an avalanche of declassified Russian archival sources, combat documents, and statistical information.

Offers a long perspective and draws on recently opened records to provide an in-depth analysis of the approaches taken by the Clinton and Bush administrations toward terrorism in general and Al-Qaeda in particular. The book also delivers arresting new details on the four 9/11 hijackings and the collapse of the Twin Towers.

A study of the legal, rational, theoretical, and biblical arguments made by the Loyalist clergy opposed to the American Revolution.

At the turn of the twentieth century, the US government viewed education as one sure way of civilizing ""others"" under its sway - among them American Indians and, after 1898, Filipinos. Teaching Empire considers how teachers took up this task.

Sets out to show how Richard Nixon's passion for sports, more than policy positions or partisan politics, engaged the American people - and how Nixon used this passion to his political advantage. Fan in Chief takes place in the realm of political theatre, a theatre in which the president's role was perfectly genuine.

If the sheer diversity of recent hits from Twelve Years a Slave to Get Out, to Black Panther tells us anything, it might be that there's no such thing as ""black film"" per se. This book is timely, then, in expanding our idea of what black films are and, going back to the 1960s, showing us new ways to understand them.

An authoritative dual biography of the two wives of Woodrow Wilson. Presents a rich and complex portrait of Wilson's marriages, first to the demure Ellen Axon Wilson and then to the controversial Edith Bolling Wilson, as well as his relationship with a "dearest friend," Mary Allen Hulbert Peck.

Explains how, under Richard Nixon, the Republican Party built its majority after 1968 with a forward-thinking, innovative appeal to young voters and leaders. Describing a complex network of influence, Seth Blumenthal examines the role of youth in courting white ethnic, urban voters and, in turn, the role of race and education in the GOP's targeted approach to young voters.

The Dine, or Navajo, have their own ways of knowing and being in the world, a cultural identity linked to their homelands through ancestral memory. The Earth Memory Compass traces this tradition as it is imparted from generation to generation, and as it has been transformed, and often obscured, by modern modes of education.

In a mere one thousand days, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy created a public persona that has remained intact for nearly forty years. Here, Barbara Perry focuses largely on Kennedy's White House years, portraying a First Lady far more complex and enigmatic than previously perceived.

Challenges scholarly assumptions about how the Osage built an Indigenous empire due to the hunting and war prowess of Osage men. Rather, Osage society was built on gender compelmentarity, Osage men and women were both central to hunting and war success and thus the rise and fall of their empire.

The epic story of how a few disorganized and politically naive Kansans, realizing they were unfairly under attack, rolled up their sleeves, went looking for fights and ended up making friends in one of the country's most hostile states.

Not far from Chattanooga in northern Georgia, the Confederacy won one of its most decisive battles at Chickamauga. This guide uses firsthand accounts to illustrate how this skirmish, only two days long, turned into the second-bloodiest battle of the Civil War with over 34,000 Union and Confederate soldiers killed, wounded, or captured.

On the campaign trail, Barack Obama spoke often about his constitutional principles. In particular, he objected to George W. Bush's claim to certain "inherent" presidential powers that could not be checked by Congress or the judiciary. After his inauguration, how did President Obama's constitutional principles fare? That is the question Louis Fisher explores in this book.

In the American imagination ""the West"" denotes a border - between civilization and wilderness, past and future, native and newcomer - and its lawlessness is legendary. In fact, there was an abundance of law in the West, as in all borderland regions of vying and overlapping claims, jurisdictions, and domains. It is this legal borderland that Beyond the Borders of the Law explores.

Examines the ideological development of American democratic thought in the context of settler colonialism, a distinct form of colonialism aimed at the appropriation of Native land rather than the exploitation of Native labour. In its focus on the disavowal of Native dispossession in democratic thought, the book provides a new perspective on the problematic relationship between race and democracy.

Late in 1967, American officials and military officers pushed an optimistic view of the Vietnam War. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV) said that the war was being won, and that Communist strength in South Vietnam was declining. Then came the Tet Offensive of 1968. In its broadest and simplest outline, the conventional wisdom about the offensivethat it was a military defeat for the Communists but a political victory for them, because it undermined support for the war in the United Statesis correct. But much that has been written about the Tet Offensive has been misleading. Edwin Mose shows that the Communist campaign shocked the American public not because the American media exaggerated its success, but because it was a bigger campaignlarger in scale, much longer in duration, and resulting in more American casualtiesthan most authors have acknowledged. MACV, led by General William Westmoreland, issued regular estimates of enemy strength in South Vietnam. During 1967, intelligence officers at MACV were increasingly required to issue low estimates to show that the war was being won. Their underestimation of enemy strength was most extreme in January 1968, just before the Tet Offensive. The weak Communist force depicted in MACV estimates would not have been capable of sustaining heavy combat month after month like they did in 1968.Mose also explores the errors of the Communists, using Vietnamese sources. The first wave of Communist attacks, at the end of January 1968, showed gross failures of coordination. Communist policy throughout 1968 and into 1969 was wildly overoptimistic, setting impossible goals for their forces.While acknowledging the journalists and historians who have correctly reported various parts of the story, Mose points out widespread misunderstandings in regard to the strength of Communist forces in Vietnam, the disputes among American intelligence agencies over estimates of enemy strength, the actual pattern of combat in 1968, the effects of Tet on American policy, and the American medias coverage of all these issues.

At the long-term care facility where Robert Rebeins father lands after a horrific car crash, a shadow box hangs next to each room, its contents suggesting something of the occupants life. In Headlights on the Prairie, Rebein has created a literary shadow box of sorts, a book in which moments of singular grace and grit encapsulate a life and a world.In the tradition of memoirs such as Tobias Wolffs This Boys Life and Ivan Doigs This House of Sky, these essays bring a storytellers gifts to lifes dramas, large and small. Following his award-winning turn on his hometown of Dodge City, Rebein takes us back to the high plains world where his family has farmed and ranched since the 1920s. It is a world populated by feedlot cowboys, stock-car drivers, and farm kids dreaming of basketball glory. Here too we find the darker tales of damaged young men returning from war, long-haul truckers addicted to crystal meth, and the sadly heroic residents of a small-town nursing home grandiloquently named Manor of the Plains.Whether contemplating a fiery crash at a race track, coming to terms with an aging parent, or navigating the last days of a beloved family dog, Rebein offers a subtle, unsparing, often moving look at the moments that go into making a writer and a man. Seen in sharp detail, and recalled from a distance, his is a story of how a man can leave his home on the prairieand yet never really get out of Dodge.

When, in Obergefell v. Hodges, the US Supreme Court held that bans on same-sex marriage violate the Constitution, Christian conservative legal organizations (CCLOs) decried the ruling. Foreseeing an assault against Christians, Liberty Counsel president Mat Staver declared, We are entering a cultural civil war. Many would argue that a cultural war was already well underway; and yet, as this timely book makes clear, the stakes, the forces engaged, and the strategies employed have undergone profound changes in recent years.In Defending Faith, Daniel Bennett shows how the Christian legal movement (CLM) and its affiliated organizations arrived at this moment in time. He explains how CCLOs advocate for issues central to Christian conservatives, highlights the influence of religious liberty on the CLMs broader agenda, and reveals how the Christian Right has become accustomed to the courts as a field of battle in todays culture wars. On one level a book about how the Christian Right mobilized and organized an effective presence on an unavoidable front in battles over social policy, the courtroom, Defending Faith is also a case study of interest groups pursuing common goals while maintaining unique identities. As different as these proliferating groups might be, they are alike in increasingly construing their efforts as a defense of religious freedom against hostile forces throughout American societyand thus as benefitting society as a whole rather than limiting the rights of certain groups. The first holistic, wide-angle picture of the Christian legal movement in the United States, Bennett's work tells the story of the growth of a powerful legal community and of the development of legal advocacy as a tool of social and political engagement.

During World War II, Allied casualty rates in the air were 45.5%. Unsurprisingly, many airmen faced their dangerous missions with beliefs and rituals ranging from the traditional to the outlandish. Military historian S. P. MacKenzie considers this phenomenon in this pioneering study of the important role that superstition played in combat flier morale among the Allies in World War II.

Politicians are polarized. Public opinion is volatile. Government is gridlocked. Or so journalists and pundits constantly report. But where are we, really, in modern American politics, and how did we get there? Those are the questions that Byron E. Shafer aims to answer in The American Political Pattern. Looking at the state of American politics at diverse points over the past eighty years, the book draws a picture, broad in scope yet precise in detail, of our political system in the modern era. It is a picture of stretches of political stability, but also, even more, of political change, one that goes a long way toward explaining how shifting factors alter the content of public policy and the character of American politicking.Shafer divides the modern world into four distinct periods: the High New Deal (19321938), the Late New Deal (19391968), the Era of Divided Government (19691992), and the Era of Partisan Volatility (19932016). Each period is characterized by a different arrangement of the same key factors: party balance, ideological polarization, issue conflict, and the policy-making process that goes with them.The American Political Pattern shows how these factors are in turn shaped by permanent aspects of the US Constitution, most especially the separation of powers and federalism, while their alignment is simultaneously influenced by the external demands for governmental action that arise in each period, including those derived from economic currents, major wars, and social movements. Analyzing these periods, Shafer sets the terms for understanding the structure and dynamics of politics in our own turbulent time. Placing the current political world in its historical and evolutionary framework, while illuminating major influences on American politics over time, his book explains where this modern world came from, why it endures, and how it might change yet again.