American History

James Madison
Philosopher, Founder, and Statesman
Edited by John R. Vile, William D. Pederson, and Frank J. Williams

James Madison: Philosopher, Founder, and Statesman presents fresh scholarship on the nation’s fourth president, who is often called both the father of the U.S. Constitution and the father of the Bill of Rights.

The Art of Occupation
Crime and Governance in American-Controlled Germany, 1944–1949
By Thomas J. Kehoe

This important contribution to American and German social, military, and police histories, as well as historical criminology offers the first comprehensive exploration of criminality, policing, and both German and American fears around the realities of conquest and potential resistance amid the looming threat from communism in an emergent Cold War.

Home Front to Battlefront
An Ohio Teenager in World War II
By Frank Lavin
· Foreword by Henry Kissinger

Home Front to Battlefront contributes the rich details of one soldier’s experience to the broader literature on World War II, offering insight into the wartime career of a Jewish Ohioan in the military from enlistment to training through overseas deployment via personal letters, recollections, official military history, and more.

Peoples of the Inland Sea
Native Americans and Newcomers in the Great Lakes Region, 1600–1870
By David Andrew Nichols

David Andrew Nichols offers a fresh history of the Lakes peoples over nearly three centuries of rapid change. As the people themselves persisted, so did their customs, religions, and control over their destinies. Accessible and creative, this book is destined to become a classroom staple for Native American history.

Congress and the People’s Contest
The Conduct of the Civil War
Edited by Paul Finkelman and Donald R. Kennon

The American Civil War was the first military conflict in history to be fought with railroads moving troops and the telegraph connecting civilian leadership to commanders in the field. New developments arose at a moment’s notice. As a result, the young nation’s political structure and culture often struggled to keep up. When war began, Congress was not even in session.

From Disarmament to Rearmament
The Reversal of US Policy toward West Germany, 1946–1955
By Sheldon A. Goldberg
· Foreword by Ingo Trauschweizer

At the end of World War II, the Allies were unanimous in their determination to disarm the former aggressor Germany. As the Cold War intensified, however, the decision whether to reverse that policy and to rearm West Germany led to disagreements both within the US government and among members of the nascent NATO alliance.

In Essentials, Unity
An Economic History of the Grange Movement
By Jenny Bourne
· Preface by Paul Finkelman

In In Essentials, Unity, Jenny Bourne presents a lively picture of a fraternal organization—the Patrons of Husbandry, or the Grange—devoted to improving the lot of small farmers but whose legacies extend far beyond agriculture, shaping the very notion of collective action and how it is deployed even today.

The Jacksonian Conservatism of Rufus P. Ranney
The Politics and Jurisprudence of a Northern Democrat from the Age of Jackson to the Gilded Age
By David M. Gold

In The Jacksonian Conservatism of Rufus P. Ranney, David M. Gold works with the public record to reveal the contours of the life and work of one of Ohio’s most intriguing legal figures. The result is a new look at how Jacksonian principles crossed the divide of the Civil War and became part of the fabric of American law and at how radical antebellum Democrats transformed themselves into Gilded Age conservatives.

Home Front to Battlefront
An Ohio Teenager in World War II
By Frank Lavin
· Foreword by Henry Kissinger

Home Front to Battlefront contributes the rich details of one soldier’s experience to the broader literature on World War II, offering insight into the wartime career of a Jewish Ohioan in the military from enlistment to training through overseas deployment via personal letters, recollections, official military history, and more.

Driven toward Madness
The Fugitive Slave Margaret Garner and Tragedy on the Ohio
By Nikki M. Taylor

Margaret Garner was a runaway slave who, when confronted with capture, slit the throat of her toddler daughter rather than have her face a life in slavery. Driven toward Madness probes slavery’s legacy of violence and trauma to capture her circumstances and her transformation from a murdering mother to an icon of tragedy and resistance.

Lincoln, Congress, and Emancipation
Edited by Paul Finkelman and Donald R. Kennon

“When Lincoln took office, in March 1861, the national government had no power to touch slavery in the states where it existed. Lincoln understood this, and said as much in his first inaugural address, noting: ‘I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists.’”

Alexander Robey Shepherd
The Man Who Built the Nation’s Capital
By John P. Richardson
· Foreword by Tony Williams

With Alexander Robey Shepherd, John P. Richardson gives us the first full-length biography of his subject, who as Washington, D.C.’s, public works czar (1871–74) built the infrastructure of the nation’s capital in a few frenetic years after the Civil War. The story of Shepherd is also the story of his hometown after that cataclysm, which left the city with churned-up streets, stripped of its trees, and exhausted.An

Veteran Narratives and the Collective Memory of the Vietnam War
By John A. Wood

In the decades since the Vietnam War, veteran memoirs have influenced Americans’ understanding of the conflict. Yet few historians or literary scholars have scrutinized how the genre has shaped the nation’s collective memory of the war and its aftermath.

Keep On Fighting
The Life and Civil Rights Legacy of Marian A. Spencer
By Dorothy H. Christenson
· Introduction by Mary E. Frederickson

Dot Christenson records the life story of remarkable leader, Marian Alexander Spencer, who joined the NAACP at thirteen and grew up to achieve a number of civic leadership firsts and a legacy of lasting civil rights victories.

Congress and the Emergence of Sectionalism
From the Missouri Compromise to the Age of Jackson
Edited by Paul Finkelman and Donald R. Kennon

Jacksonian democracy; sectionalism; secession; history of Congress; American history

American Pogrom
The East St. Louis Race Riot and Black Politics
By Charles L. Lumpkins

On July 2 and 3, 1917, a mob of white men and women looted and torched the homes and businesses of African Americans in the small industrial city of East St. Louis, Illinois. When the terror ended, the attackers had destroyed property worth millions of dollars, razed several neighborhoods, injured hundreds, and forced at least seven thousand black townspeople to seek refuge across the Mississippi River in St. Louis, Missouri.