Bücher veröffentlicht von University Press of Kansas

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.

Order, planning, and reasonin the depths of the Great Depression, with the nation teetering on the brink of collapse, this was what was needed. And this, Kenneth J. Bindas suggests, was what the ideas and ideals of modernity offereda way to make sense of the chaos all around. In Modernity and the Great Depression, Bindas offers a new perspective on the provenance and power of modernist thought and practice in early twentieth-century America.In the midst of a terrible economic, social, and political crisis, modernism provided an alternative to the response of many traditional moralists and religious leaders. Promoting a faith based in reason, organization, and planning, modernists espoused a salvation that was not eternal but rather temporal, tangible, and, for a generation with so little to hold onto, eminently practicalone that found virtue in pleasure and private pursuits. After surveying the contested definitional terrain of modernism and modernity, Bindas tracks their course and influence through such government programs as the Civilian Conservation Corps and the National Youth Administration; in the massive American Expositions and World's Fairs that heralded progress and a better future; on the efforts of women interior decorators to update and enhance the comforts of the modern home; andthanks to the proliferation of electricity and radioon the popular and high-culture musical recordings and broadcasts that reinforced a shift away from traditional modes of performance and reception.In the transformation he describes, Bindas also locates the limits of modernisms influence, as later generations confronted the spiritual shortcomings of its ultra-rationalist and materialist paradigm.

Provides an overview of American federal Inspectors General and analyzes their development and capacity to contribute to new forms of democratic legitimacy.

Explains why American health policy became divided into separate realms of public health and individual medicine and how this division shapes the contemporary landscape.

Shows that the current understanding of how and when justices should recuse themselves is at odds with US constitutional design. Viewing recusal through a constitutional lens, Louis J. Virelli reveals new and compelling information about how justices should decide recusal questions and, in turn, how government should function more broadly.

The Smithsonian Institution, founded in 1848, viewed the Yellowstone National Park's resources as critical to its own mission, looking to the park for specimens to augment its natural history collections. How this relationship developed around the conservation and display of American wildlife is the little-known story Diane Smith tells in Yellowstone and the Smithsonian.

Bullying does not just affect children; adults do it an suffer from it too. It goes beyond the schoolyard into the corporation, the military, the police, the government, the family, and the media. In a society where wealth and power are unequally distributed bullying is institutional.

When prospector Ed Schieffelin set out from Fort Huachuca in 1877 in search of silver, skeptics told him all hed find would be his own tombstone. What he did discover, of course, was one of the richest veins of silver in the Westa strike he wryly called Tombstone. Briefly a boomtown, in less than a decade Tombstone was fading into what, for the next half-century, looked more like a ghost town. How is it, Kara McCormack asks, that the resurrection of a few of the towns long-dead figures, caught forever in a thirty-second shoot-out, revived the moribund Tombstoneand turned it into what the Arizona Office of Tourism today calls equal parts Deadwood and Disney?A meditation on the marketing of authenticity, Imagining Tombstone considers this most authentic western town in America as the intersection of history and mythmaking, entertainment and education, the wish to preserve, the will to succeed, and the need to survive. McCormack revisits the facts behind the feud that culminated in the Earp brothers and Doc Hollidays long walk to their showdown with the Clantons and McLaurysa walk reenacted by so many actors that it became a ritual of Hollywood westerns and a staple of present-day Tombstones tourist offerings. Taking into account decades of preservation efforts, stories told by Hollywood, performances on the towns streets, the fervor of Earp historians and western history buffs, and global notions of the West, Imagining Tombstone shows how the towns tenacity depends on far more than a usable past. If Tombstone is The Town Too Tough to Die, it is also, as this edifying and entertaining book makes clear, the place where authentic history and its counterpart in popular culture reveal their lasting and lucrative hold on the public imagination.

November 1917. The American troops were poorly trained, deficient in military equipment and doctrine, not remotely ready for armed conflict on a large scaleand they'd arrived on the Western front to help the French push back the Germans. The story of what happened nextthe American Expeditionary Force's trial by fire on the brutal battlefields of Franceis told in full for the first time in Thunder and Flames.Where history has given us some perspective on the individual battles of the periodat Cantigny, Chateau Thierry, Belleau Wood, the Marne River, Soissons, and little-known Fismettethey appear here as part of a larger series of interconnected operations, all conducted by Americans new to the lethal killing fields of World War I and guided by the battle-tested French. Following the AEF from their initial landing to their emergence as an independent army in late September 1918, this book presents a complex picture of how, learning warfare on the fly, sometimes with devastating consequences, the American force played a critical role in blunting and then rolling back the German army's drive toward Paris. The picture that emerges is at once sweeping in scope and rich in detail, with firsthand testimony conjuring the real mud and blood of the combat that Edward Lengel so vividly describes. Official reports and documents provide the strategic and historical context for these ground-level accounts, from the perspective of the Germans as well as the Americans and French. Battle by battle, Thunder and Flames reveals the cost of the inadequacies in U.S. training, equipment, logistics, intelligence, and command, along with the rifts in the Franco-American military marriage. But it also shows how, by trial and error, through luck and ingenuity, the AEF swiftly became the independent fighting force of General John "e;Blackjack"e; Pershing's long-held dreamits divisions ultimately among the most combat-effective military forces to see the war through.

A job that once was ""not worth a bucket of warm spit"", according to John Nance Garner, has become, in the hands of the most recent vice presidents, critical to the governing of America on an ongoing basis. It is this dramatic development of the nation's second office that Joel K. Goldstein traces and explains in The White House Vice Presidency.

This comprehensive portrait of nineteenth-century reformer Clarina Howard Nichols uncovers the fascinating story of a complex woman and reveals her important role in women's rights, antislavery, and westward expansion.

This memoir chronicles the story of James Daly, a young black soldier held captive by the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese and subsequently accused (and acquitted) of collaboration with the enemy.

This title chronicles the struggles leading to the creation of the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces as well as its subsequent efforts to fulfill a difficult and sometimes controversial mission. The work provides a perspective on the uneasy relations between civil and military authority.

Thomas Taylor was a junior officer who fought under Sherman at Vicksburg and Chattanooga and on the march through Georgia. His diaries and letters contain vivid descriptions of numerous skirmishes and battles over four years. This volume interleaves Taylor's words with narrative.

Without what the Allies learned in the Mediterranean air war in 1942-1944, the Normandy landing-and so, perhaps, World War II-would have ended differently. This is one of many lessons of The Mediterranean Air War, the first one-volume history of the vital role of airpower during the three-year struggle for control of the Mediterranean Basin in World War II.

Movingly chronicles the lives, deaths, and memory of nine Marines from the mining community of Morenci, Arizona, who were transformed from happy-go-lucky high schoolers to soldiers in Vietnam. Only three of them survived the war. Their story encompasses pride, loss, grief, and the devastating impact of war on a small town.

"An outstanding and welcome examination of a city of immense importance." - Civil War Book Review "A great read for local Civil War buffs and all of us enchanted by the city's past. Gerteis fills his narrative with vignettes that vividly capture the tone, mood, and values of the time." - St. Louis Post-Dispatch "The bloody divisions created by the Civil War were deeper and higher in the Union slave states, where Americans were divided from the beginning and where there were numerous civil wars within the Civil War. Nowhere is this more true than in St. Louis. And no one has told the story of St. Louis' civil wars better than Louis Gerteis.... A triumph." - Ira Berlin, author of Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America "The book is replete with gripping and unforgettable images, from the hobnailed boots of the amateur soldiers in the gunpowder room of the arsenal to the appalling refugee camps of the African Americans escaping slavery and war and the prisons for southern sympathizers." - Mark E. Neely, Jr., author of Fate of Liberty: Abraham Lincoln and Civil Liberties"

As our 27th president from 1909 to 1913, and then as chief justice of the Supreme Court from 1921 to 1930, William Howard Taft was the only man ever to lead two of America's three governing branches. But between these two well-documented periods in office, there lies an eight-year patch of largely unexplored political wilderness. It was during this time, after all, that Taft somehow managed to rise from his ignominious defeat by both Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt in the 1912 election to achieve his lifelong goal of becoming chief justice. In the first in-depth look at this period in Taft's singular career, eminent presidential historian Lewis L. Gould reveals how a man often derided for his lack of political acumen made his way through the hazards of Republican affairs to gain his objective.In the years between the presidency and the Supreme Court Taft was, as one commentator observed, "e;the greatest of globe trotters for humanity."e; Gould tracks him as he crisscrosses the country from 1913 through the summer of 1921, the inveterate traveler reinventing himself as an elder Republican statesman with no visible political ambition beyond informing and serving the public. Taft was, however, working the long game, serving on the National War Labor Board, fighting for the League of Nations, teaching law and constitutional history at Yale, making up his differences with Roosevelt, all while negotiating the Republican Party's antipathy and his own intense dislike of Woodrow Wilson, whose wartime policies and battle for the league he was bound to support. Throughout, his judicial ambition shaped his actions, with surprising adroitness.This account of Taft's journey from the White House to the Supreme Court fills a large gap in our understanding of an important American politician and jurist. It also discloses how intricate and complicated public affairs had become during the era of World War I and its aftermath, an era in which William Howard Taft, as a shrewd commentator on the political scene, a resourceful practitioner of party politics, and a man of consummate ambition, made a significant and lasting mark.

The definitive account of the most famous African American fighting unit in World War I and their quest for equality in the United States.

Why are Americans so bad at marriage? It's certainly not for lack of trying. By the early 21st century Americans were spending billions on marriage and family counseling, seeking advice and guidance from some 50,000 experts. And yet, the divorce rate suggests that all of this therapeutic intervention isn't making couples happier or marriages more durable. Quite the contrary, Ian Dowbiggin tells us in this thought-provoking book: the "e;caring industry"e; is part of the problem. Under the influence of therapeutic reformers, marital and familial dynamics in this country have shifted from mores and commitment to love and companionship. This movement toward a "e;me marriage,"e; as the New York Times has termed it, with its attendant soaring expectations and acute dissatisfactions, is rooted as much in the twists and turns of 20th-century history as it is in the realities in the hearts and minds of modern Americans, Dowbiggin argues; and his book reveals how effectively those changes have been encouraged and orchestrated by a small but resourceful group of social reformers with ties to eugenics, birth control, population control, and sex education. In The Search for Domestic Bliss, Dowbiggin delves into the stories of the usual suspects in the founding of the therapeutic gospel, exposing little known aspects of their influence and misunderstood features of their work. Here we learn, for instance, that Betty Friedan did not after all discover "e;the problem that knows no name"e;the widespread unhappiness of women in mid-century America; and that, like Friedan, one of the pioneers of marriage counseling was an open admirer of Stalin's Russia. The book also explores the long overlooked impact of sex researchers Alfred Kinsey and Masters and Johnson on the development of marriage and family counseling; and considers the under-appreciated contributions to the marriage counseling movement of social reformer and activist Emily Mudd. Through these and other reform-minded Americans, Dowbiggin traces the concerted and deliberate way in which the old order of looking to family and community for guidance gave way to seeking guidance from marriage and family counseling professionals. Such a transformation, as this book makes clear, has been a key part of a major revolution in the way Americans think about their inner selves and their relations with friends, family, and community membersa revolution in which once deeply private concerns have been redefined as grave matters of public mental health.

Offers a fresh and revealing account of the dramatic 1948 presidential election between President Harry Truman and challenger Thomas Dewey. Recounts a contest with more twists and turns--and a different outcome--than most contemporaries anticipated, and makes engaging reading for scholar and history buff alike.

Provides a vivid account of growing up on a 160-acre family farm in Goshen Township in Clay County, Kansas. A coming-of-age memoir set in the 1930s to '50s that blends local history with personal reflection to paint a realistic picture of farm life and families from a now-lost world.

Lasting from June 1864 through April 1865, the Richmond-Petersburg Campaign was the longest of the Civil War. This compact yet comprehensive guide allows armchair historian and battlefield visitor alike to follow the campaign's course, with a clear view of its multi-faceted strategic, operation, tactical and human dimensions.

From Eisenhower's toppling of Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954 to Bush's overthrow of Noriega in Panama in 1989, this title casts an eye on eight major cases of US intervention in the Western Hemisphere, offering interpretations of why they occurred and what they signified.

Illuminating a classic case from the turbulent civil rights era of the 1960s, two of America's foremost legal historians-Kermit Hall and Melvin Urofsky-provide a compact and highly readable updating of one of the most memorable decisions in the Supreme Court's canon.

Labriola Center Book Award The heyday of American Indian activism is generally seen as bracketed by the occupation of Alcatraz in 1969 and the Longest Walk in 1978; yet Native Americans had long struggled against federal policies that threatened to undermine tribal sovereignty and self-determination. This is the first book-length study of American Indian political activism during its seminal years, focusing on the movement's largely neglected early efforts before Alcatraz or Wounded Knee captured national attention.Ranging from the end of World War II to the late 1960s, Daniel Cobb uncovers the groundwork laid by earlier activists. He draws on dozens of interviews with key players to relate untold stories of both seemingly well-known events such as the American Indian Chicago Conference and little-known ones such as Native participation in the Poor People's Campaign of 1968. Along the way, he introduces readers to a host of previously neglected but critically important activists: Mel Thom, Tillie Walker, Forrest Gerard, Dr. Jim Wilson, Martha Grass, and many others.Cobb takes readers inside the early movementfrom D'Arcy McNickle's founding of American Indian Development, Inc. and Vine Deloria Jr.'s tenure as executive director of the National Congress of American Indians to Clyde Warrior's leadership in the National Indian Youth Counciland describes how early activists forged connections between their struggle and anticolonialist movements in the developing world. He also describes how the War on Poverty's Community Action Programs transformed Indian Country by training bureaucrats and tribal leaders alike in new political skills and providing activists with the leverage they needed to advance the movement toward self-determination.This book shows how Native people who never embraced militancy-and others who did-made vital contributions as activists well before the American Indian Movement burst onto the scene. By highlighting the role of early intellectuals and activists like Sol Tax, Nancy Lurie, Robert K. Thomas, Helen Peterson, and Robert V. Dumont, Cobb situates AIM's efforts within a much broader context and reveals how Native people translated the politics of Cold War civil rights into the language of tribal sovereignty.Filled with fascinating portraits, Cobb's groundbreaking study expands our understanding of American Indian political activism and contributes significantly to scholarship on the War on Poverty, the 1960s, and postwar politics and social movements.

A righteous reformer committed to the power of education, Horace Mann became a national figure by championing the common school movement. This new look at his work and thought shows that Mann's ideas on civic education have had a lasting impact on the way that we still think today about education and its relation to our civic life. It reassesses Mann's philosophy of civic education and deeply resonates with today's pervasive and highly political debates about the role of education.

Offers a look at how Jimmy Carter alienated his own supporters, why Ted Kennedy ran against him, what the Kennedy campaign has to say about America in the 1970s, and whether or not the 1980 election really was a turning point in electoral history.

Traces the Bureau of Land Management's course over three periods - its formation in 1946 and early focus on livestock and mines, its 1970s role as mediator between commerce and conservation, and its experience of political gridlock since 1981 when it faced a powerful anti-environmental backlash.

Wife of one president and mother of another, Barbara Bush was an outspoken first lady who looked more like her constituents than did her predecessors. This title reveals a woman who was more of a success as first lady than her husband was as president - who in many ways was the public face of the George H W Bush administration.