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The Wehrmacht's Last Stand is a gripping account of German military campaigns during the final phase of World War II, paying close attention to the officers who planned and led them.

A book on John F Kennedy's White House years. It shows Kennedy to be ""the most medicated, one of the most courageous, and perhaps the most self-absorbed of our presidents."" Featuring a bibliographical essay and twenty-two photos from the JFK library, it aims to be the definitive appraisal of Camelot's kingdom.

The 70s witnessed economic decline in America, coupled with a series of foreign policy failures, events that created an air of unease and uncertainty. This volume examines the ways in which Americans responded to a changing world and sought to redefine themselves.

"Through a close analysis of New Right architect Paul Weyrich, who is often seen as secular but was a committed Catholic who worked closely with evangelical Protestants, this book explores the way this Catholic-Protestant political alliance was forged by using a shared identity of victimhood to stitch together disparate religious groups, and then how this new political coalition constructed an imagined past that they projected into the future as the ideal goal. Chelsea Ebin calls this "prefigurative traditionalism" -- a paradoxical prefiguring of a manufactured past. Using this strategy, the new Religious Right obscures the radicality of its politics by framing the movement's aims as reactionary and defensive rather than proactive and offensive. An interdisciplinary work informed by the fields of history, religious studies, public law, and American politics, Prefiguring the Past is an insightful exploration of the origins of the New Christian Right, whose political victories are now radically reshaping the landscape of American society"--

The Vietnam War ended nearly fifty years ago but the central paradox of the struggle endures: how did the world's strongest nation fail to secure freedom for the Republic of Vietnam? Michael F. Morris addresses this vexing question by focusing on the senior Marine headquarters in the conflict's most dangerous region. Known as I Corps, the northern five provinces of South Vietnam witnessed the bloodiest fighting of the entire war. I Corps also contained the Viet Cong's strongest infrastructure, key portions of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, and the important political and economic prizes of Hue and Da Nang. For Americans, it was the site of the first major military operation (Operation STARLITE); the Battles of Hue City and Khe Sanh during the 1968 Tet Offensive; and a military innovation known as the Combined Action Platoon (CAP), a counterinsurgency technique designed to secure the region's villages. The Marine zone served as Saigon's "canary in the coal mine"--if the war was to be won, allied action must succeed in its most contested region. With such deep significance, I Corps holds many answers to the lasting questions of the Vietnam War.Following the Marine Amphibious Force (III MAF)--the primary US tactical command in I Corps from 1965 to 1970--Corps Competency? provides the first composite analysis of the critical role of the senior Marine headquarters and offers a coherence missing in piecemeal accounts. Despite the critical importance of I Corps, relatively little is known about its overall impact on the war due to disconnected and patchy historical study of the region.In this comprehensive and newly insightful study of the Vietnam War, Michael Morris tells a story that illustrates what can happen when a corps headquarters is not ready for the conflict it encounters and then fights the war it wants to rather than the one it must.

In this book, Bruce I. Oppenheimer and the late Robert L. Peabody analyze the 1976 House majority leader race and present the result of their unrivaled insider access to this turning point in congressional history. This fierce contest among the Democratic leadership marked the transition of the House of Representatives into the party-dominated institution that is so familiar today. The 1976 election, in which the Democrats consolidated the gains made in 1974, led to two important changes in House Democratic leadership. After Carl Albert's retirement, Majority Leader Thomas "Tip" O'Neill, Jr., of Massachusetts advanced unopposed to the Speakership. This led to a contest between four formidable candidates for the position of majority leader: Rules Committee Spokesman Richard Bolling of Missouri, Caucus Chairman Phillip Burton of California, Majority Whip John McFall of California, and Representative James C. Wright, Jr., of Texas. It was arguably the most competitive contest for a major leadership position in congressional history. Ultimately, it took extensive campaigning and three ballots before Wright emerged victorious. During the race, Oppenheimer and Peabody conducted lengthy interviews with the candidates and their principal supporters, resulting in their eye-opening analysis of this contest as a key stepping stone between committee government and conditional party government in the House of Representatives that continues to the present day. The authors first presented their original research on the 1976 House majority leader contest at the 1977 annual meeting of the American Political Science Association. With that original groundbreaking paper at its core, this book adds new chapters by Oppenheimer that evaluate the accuracy of the study and provide richer historical context, showing how congressional politics changed in the years after the 1976 contest. Their original study was the result of the greatest access that political scientists have ever had to a congressional leadership race, and it has enduring value for understanding our current political crisis.

"In Facing the Victorious Turks, Andrew Orr argues that French military, intelligence, and diplomatic officials' Orientalism and racism led them to misunderstand the Turkish War of Independence by placing Europeans at the center of their analysis of the Middle East. French observers' flawed understanding of Muslims and Islam fed conspiracy theories that distorted their understanding of Germany, the emerging Soviet Union, Middle Eastern politics, and colonialism. It allowed them to perceive and report the danger of Middle East-wide revolts without questioning whether it was European rule itself that was causing the political turmoil. French military leaders were thus able to escape the sort of self-reflection that might have exposed the exploitative nature of colonialism and pushed them to question the moral and strategic justifications for colonial rule"--

"Examples of fraud on the public are everywhere. Fossil fuel industries have long used PR firms and lobbyists to spread disinformation about oil and climate change. Cigarette companies famously lied about the effects of tobacco, and opioid manufacturers used deceptive marketing tactics. Social media influencers and fringe media outlets promoted fraudulent claims about the pandemic being a government hoax. Others claimed that the COVID-19 vaccines were part of a sinister plot. Politicians lie, or at least seem to lie, with such regularity that people have become deeply cynical about whether to believe anything they say. Many Republicans, led by Donald Trump, insisted on the false accusation that the 2020 presidential election was "stolen" by Joe Biden and the Democratic Party. Henricksen shows that fraud is carried out for many reasons beyond financial gain, including political gain, the prevention of justice, and the falsification of history. In addition to exposing the depths of the problem, Henricksen also gives readers a way forward. He proposes that we call these massive acts of fraud by their proper name, "de-weaponize" the First Amendment that was never meant to shield fraudulent claims, and enforce new laws that protect the public. By diagnosing the crisis of misinformation and showing how to fight it, In Fraud We Trust is a book that speaks to the present moment"--

A concise summary of the key ideas that Wes Jackson--one of the founders of the sustainable agriculture movement--has developed over the past five decades.

Peter Seaborg Award The heroics of black Union soldiers in the Civil War have been justly celebrated, but their postwar lives largely neglected. Donald Shaffer's illuminating study shines a bright light on this previously obscure part of African American history, revealing for the first time black veterans' valiant but often frustrating efforts to secure true autonomy and equality as civilians.After the Glory shows how black veterans' experiences as soldiers provided them for the first time with a sense of manliness that shaped not only their own lives but also their contributions to the African American community. Shaffer makes clear, however, that their postwar pursuit of citizenship and a dignified manhood was never very easy for black veterans, their triumphs frequently neither complete nor lasting Shaffer chronicles the postwar transition of black veterans from the Union army, as well as their subsequent life patterns, political involvement, family and marital life, experiences with social welfare, comradeship with other veterans, and memories of the war itself. He draws on such sources as Civil War pension records to fashion a collective biography-a social history of both ordinary and notable lives-resurrecting the words and memories of many black veterans to provide an intimate view of their lives and struggles.Like other African Americans from many walks of life, black veterans fought fiercely against disenfranchisement and Jim Crow and were better equipped to do so than most other African Americans. They carried a sense of pride instilled by their military service that made them better prepared to confront racism and discrimination and more respected in their own communities. As Shaffer reveals, they also had nearly equal access to military pensions, financial resources available to few other blacks, and even found acceptance among white Union veterans in the Grand Army of the Republic fraternity.After the Glory is not merely another tale of black struggles in a racist America; it is the story of how a select group of African Americans led a quest for manhood--and often found it within themselves when no one else would give it to them.

The "ethnic cleansing" that has gripped the Balkans for much of this decade is but another chapter in the long history of man's inhumanity to man. Hopeful but unflinching in the face of such realities, Howard Ball's book focuses on international efforts to punish perpetrators of genocide and other war crimes. Combining history, politics, and critical analysis, he revisits the killing fields of Cambodia, documents the three-month Hutu "machete genocide" of about 800,000 Tutsi villagers in Rwanda, and casts recent headlines from Kosovo in the light of these other conflicts.Beginning with the 1899 Geneva Accords and the Armenian genocide of World War I, Ball traces efforts to create an institution to judge, punish, and ultimately deter such atrocities--particularly since World War II, since which there have been fourteen cases of genocide. He shows how international military tribunals in Nuremberg and Tokyo set important precedents for international criminal justice, tells what the international community learned from its failure to stop Pol Pot in Cambodia, and describes the ad hoc tribunals convened to address genocide in the Balkans and Rwanda. He then focuses on the establishment of the International Criminal Court with the Treaty of Rome in 1998 and assesses its probable future.The book also analyzes the reluctance of the United States to sanction the ICC, tracing longstanding U.S. reluctance to grant criminal justice jurisdiction to an international prosecutor. Ball examines questions of national sovereignty versus international law and reminds us that although most Americans consider such horrors to be problems of other countries, these are in fact countries in which many of our own citizens have their roots.With its unique focus on the ICC, Prosecuting War Crimes and Genocide is a work of both synthesis and advocacy that combines history and current events to make us more aware of the racist fervor with which these brutalities are carried out, more alert to the euphemisms in which they are cloaked. It forces us to ask not only whether the killing will stop, but whether humanity can prevent future genocides.

"Wildflowers and Grasses of Kansas: A Field Guide was published in 2005 and included full descriptions and color photographs of 323 common and conspicuous wildflowers, grasses, and grasslike plants found in the state. This updated and enlarged edition contains descriptions and accompanying color photos of 99 additional species. Six species found in the original edition have been removed. Four were trees that are covered in more detail and with multiple identification photographs in Trees, Shrubs, and Woody Vines in Kansas (Haddock and Freeman, 2019) . . . . . The primary focus is on native species, though selected frequently observed naturalized species have been included . In the 16 years since Wildflowers and Grasses of Kansas: A Field Guide was published, there have been advances in our understanding of the evolutionary relationships of vascular plants. Studies of DNA, macro- and micromorphology, cytology, phenology, ecology, and biogeography have impacted our understanding of the flora of Kansas. Consequently, an important component of this edition has been to update the nomenclature and circumscribe taxa along lines that are more consistent with current knowledge"--

Referring to a situation in the Chicago suburb of Skokie, which was home to many survivors of the Holocaust in the 1970s, and where American Nazi sympathizers wished to demonstrate, the author of this book argues that freedom of speech must be defended even in the most abhorrent of circumstances.

The beautiful picture of brothers in arms vanquishing a tyrant. The power of a well-orchestrated army and navy winning historic battles. Overwhelming military might and ability through teamwork. This is how the US military services portray themselves to the public and to their own service members through official doctrine. However, under the veneer of jointness, deeply fraught processes are at play. Frequently, the services think more about protecting organizational turf than about national security and maintaining an advantage against the United States' external adversaries. Uniting US military services is a difficult endeavor that becomes even more so the farther from a battlefield and the higher up the command structure the unifying needs to happen.In The Collaborative Fight, Paul R. Birch and Lina M. Svedin examine cases of institutional jointness among US military services from the late nineteenth century into the twenty-first century. They draw actionable conclusions for practitioners in the defense establishment while giving examples of successful joint cooperation that overcame the difficulties inherent in pursuing it. Even the successful cases that Birch and Svedin discuss show that the US military services face bureaucratic incentives and organizational leadership issues that make battlefield cooperation less than ideal.Birch and Svedin adeptly translate theory and history into approaches useful to practitioners in the field while examining the theoretical framework outlining the drivers in joint military cooperation.

Today, when politicians, pundits, and scholars speak of states' rights, they are usually referring to Southern efforts to curtail the advance of civil rights policies or to conservative opposition to the federal government under the New Deal, Great Society, and Warren Court. Sean Beienburg shows that this was not always the case, and that there was once a time when federalism--the form of government that divides powers between the state and federal governments--was associated with progressive, rather than conservative, politics.In Progressive States' Rights, Sean Beienburg tells an alternative story of federalism by exploring states' efforts in the years before the New Deal of shaping constitutional discourse to ensure that a protective welfare and regulatory governmental regime would be built in the states rather than the national government. These state-level actors not only aggressively participated in constitutional politics and interpretation but also specifically sought to create an alternative model of state-building that would pair a robust state power on behalf of the public good with a traditionally limited national government.Current politics generally collapse policy and constitutional views (where a progressive view on one policy also assumes a progressive view on the other), but Beienburg shows that this was not always true, and indeed many of those most devoted to progressive policy views were deeply committed to a conservative constitutionalism.

"The latest book by renowned legal historian William Nelson is about American judicial conservatism during the closing decades of the nineteenth century and the opening decades of the twentieth. It examines the subject, however, not by studying all jurisdictions but by focusing in detail on the work of judges in a single jurisdiction-New York-together with a glimpse at the work product of United States Supreme Court justices. Nelson's book challenges the received wisdom that conservative judges, along with much of the legal profession in the decades from 1860 to 1920, were on the side of big business and the rich. He finds another form of conservative jurisprudence on display in New York, where conservative judges reached decisions that were forward-looking and progressive in character with respect to business doctrine"--

The Indian Trade and Intercourse Act of 1834 represented what many considered the ongoing benevolence of the United States toward Native Americans, establishing a congressionally designated refuge for displaced Indians to protect them from exploitation by white men. Others came to see it as a legally sanctioned way to swindle them out of their land.This first book-length study of "Indian country" focuses on Section 1 of the 1834 Act-which established its boundaries-to show that this legislation was ineffectual from the beginning. William Unrau challenges conventional views that the act was a continuation of the government's benevolence toward Indians, revealing it instead as little more than a deceptive stopgap that facilitated white settlement and development of the trans-Missouri West.Encompassing more than half of the Louisiana Purchase and stretching from the Red River to the headwaters of the Missouri, Indian country was designated as a place for Native survival and improvement. Unrau shows that, although many consider that the territory merely fell victim to Manifest Destiny, the concept of Indian country was flawed from the start by such factors as distorted perceptions of the region's economic potential, tribal land compressions, government complicity in overland travel and commerce, and blatant disregard for federal regulations. Chronicling the encroachments of land-hungry whites, which met with little resistance from negligent if not complicit lawmakers and bureaucrats, he tells how the protection of Indian country lasted only until the needs of westward expansion outweighed those associated with the presumed solution to the "Indian problem" and how subsequent legislation negated the supposed permanence of Indian lands.When thousands of settlers began entering Kansas Territory in 1854, the government appeared powerless to protect Indians--even though it had been responsible for carving Kansas out of Indian country in the first place. Unrau's work shows that there has been a general misunderstanding of Indian country both then and now--that it was never more or less than what the white man said it was, not what the Indians were told or believed--and represents a significant chapter in the shameful history of America's treatment of Indians.