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.

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.

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

The Whiskey Merchant’s Diary
An Urban Life in the Emerging Midwest
By Joseph J. Mersman
· Edited by Linda A. Fisher

“Business during the Week was very dull. The great Plague of the Year Cholera is driving every Country [person] and Merchants from Surrounding Cities away. The City looks like a desert Compared to its usual animated appearance. People parting for a day or so, bid farewell to each other. My Partners family are fortunately in the Country. I and Clemens sleep in the Same bed, in Case of a Sudden attack to be within groaning distance.”—u2009Diary entry for Sunday, May 13th, 1849

Teller Tales
Histories
By Jo Carson

“All my work fits in my mouth,” Jo Carson says. “I write performance material no matter what else the pieces get called, and whether they are for my voice or other characters’ voices … they are first to be spoken aloud.” Following an oral tradition that has strong roots in her native Tennessee, the author of Teller Tales invites the reader to participate in events in a way that no conventional history book can.Both

One Day for Democracy
Independence Day and the Americanization of Iron Range Immigrants
By Mary Lou Nemanic

Just before the turn of the twentieth century, immigrants from eastern and southern Europe who had settled in mining regions of Minnesota formed a subculture that combined elements of Old World traditions and American culture. Their unique pluralistic version of Americanism was expressed in Fourth of July celebrations rooted in European carnival traditions that included rough games, cross-dressing, and rowdiness.In

The Rescue of Joshua Glover
A Fugitive Slave, the Constitution, and the Coming of the Civil War
By H. Robert Baker

On March 11, 1854, the people of Wisconsin prevented agents of the federal government from carrying away the fugitive slave, Joshua Glover. Assembling in mass outside the Milwaukee courthouse, they demanded that the federal officers respect his civil liberties as they would those of any other citizen of the state. When the officers refused, the crowd took matters into its own hands and rescued Joshua Glover.

Noble Purposes
Nine Champions of the Rule of Law
Edited by Norman Gross
· Foreword by Karen J. Mathis

Throughout the history of the United States, the acts of a few have proved to be turning points in the way our legal system has treated the least of us. The nine individuals whose deeds are recounted have compelling stories, and though they remain unknown to the general public, their commitment to the rule of law has had a lasting impact on our nation.Noble Purposes brings their stories to life.

Ohio’s War
The Civil War in Documents
Edited by Christine Dee

In 1860, Ohio was among the most influential states in the nation. As the third-most-populous state and the largest in the middle west, it embraced those elements that were in concert-but also at odds-in American society during the Civil War era. Ohio’s War uses documents from that vibrant and tumultuous time to reveal how Ohio’s soldiers and civilians experienced the Civil War.

The Fairer Death
Executing Women in Ohio
By Victor L. Streib

Women on death row are such a rarity that, once condemned, they may be ignored and forgotten. Ohio, a typical, middle-of-the-road death penalty state, provides a telling example of this phenomenon. The Fairer Death: Executing Women in Ohio explores Ohio’s experience with the death penalty for women and reflects on what this experience reveals about the death penalty for women throughout the nation.Victor

From Submarines to Suburbs
Selling a Better America, 1939–1959
By Cynthia Lee Henthorn

During World War II, U.S. businesses devised marketing strategies that encouraged consumers to believe their country’s wartime experience would launch a better America. Advertisements and promotional articles celebrated the immense industrial output that corporations achieved during the war.

The History of Indiana Law
Edited by David J. Bodenhamer and Randall T. Shepard

Long regarded as a center for middle-American values, Indiana is also a cultural crossroads that has produced a rich and complex legal and constitutional heritage. The History of Indiana Law traces this history through a series of expert articles by identifying the themes that mark the state’s legal development and establish its place within the broader context of the Midwest and nation.The

For the Prevention of Cruelty
The History and Legacy of Animal Rights Activism in the United States
By Diane L. Beers

Animal rights. Those two words conjure diverse but powerful images and reactions. Some nod in agreement, while others roll their eyes in contempt. Most people fall somewhat uncomfortably in the middle, between endorsement and rejection, as they struggle with the profound moral, philosophical, and legal questions provoked by the debate. Today, thousands of organizations lobby, agitate, and educate the public on issues concerning the rights and treatment of nonhumans.For

The Papers of Clarence Mitchell Jr., Volume II
1944–1946
By Clarence Mitchell Jr.
· Edited by Denton L. Watson

Clarence Mitchell Jr. was the driving force in the movement for passage of civil rights laws in America. The foundation for Mitchell’s struggle was laid during his tenure at the Fair Employment Practice Committee, where he led implementation of President Roosevelt’s policy barring racial discrimination in employment in the national defense and war industry programs. Mitchell’s FEPC reports and memoranda chart the beginning of the modern civil rights movement.The

The Papers of Clarence Mitchell Jr., Volume I
1942–1943
By Clarence Mitchell Jr.
· Edited by Denton L. Watson

Clarence Mitchell Jr. was the driving force in the movement for passage of civil rights laws in America. The foundation for Mitchell’s struggle was laid during his tenure at the Fair Employment Practice Committee, where he led implementation of President Roosevelt’s policy barring racial discrimination in employment in the national defense and war industry programs. Mitchell’s FEPC reports and memoranda chart the beginning of the modern civil rights movement.The

Closing Arguments
Clarence Darrow on Religion, Law, and Society
By Clarence Darrow
· Edited by S. T. Joshi

Clarence Darrow, son of a village undertaker and coffinmaker, rose to become one of America’s greatest attorneys—and surely its most famous. The Ohio native gained renown for his central role in momentous trials, including his 1924 defense of Leopold and Loeb and his defense of Darwinian principles in the 1925 Scopes “Monkey Trial.”

The Emergence of the Moundbuilders
The Archaeology of Tribal Societies in Southeastern Ohio
Edited by Elliot M. Abrams and AnnCorinne Freter

Native American societies, often viewed as unchanging, in fact experienced a rich process of cultural innovation in the millennia prior to recorded history. Societies of the Hocking River Valley in southeastern Ohio, part of the Ohio River Valley, created a tribal organization beginning about 2000 bc.Edited

Building on a Borrowed Past
Place and Identity in Pipestone, Minnesota
By Sally J. Southwick

Why is there a national monument near a small town on the Minnesota prairie? Why do the town’s residents dress as Indians each summer and perform a historical pageant based on a Victorian-era poem? To answer such questions, Building on a Borrowed Past: Place and Identity in Pipestone, Minnesota shows what happens when one culture absorbs the heritage of another for civic advantage.Founded

Frontiers of Freedom
Cincinnati’s Black Community 1802–1868
By Nikki M. Taylor

Nineteenth-century Cincinnati was northern in its geography, southern in its economy and politics, and western in its commercial aspirations. While those identities presented a crossroad of opportunity for native whites and immigrants, African Americans endured economic repression and a denial of civil rights, compounded by extreme and frequent mob violence. No other northern city rivaled Cincinnati’s vicious mob spirit.Frontiers

DeVoto’s West
History, Conservation, and the Public Good
By Bernard DeVoto
· Edited by Edward K. Muller

Social commentator and preeminent western historian Bernard DeVoto vigorously defended public lands in the West against commercial interests. By the time of his death in 1955, DeVoto had published criticism, history, and fiction. He had won both the Pulitzer and Bancroft prizes. But his most passionate writing—at once incisive and eloquent—advocated conservation of America’s prairies, rangeland, forests, mountains, canyons, and deserts.DeVoto’s

Immigration, Diversity, and Broadcasting in the United States 1990—2001
By Vibert C. Cambridge

The last decade of the twentieth century brought a maturing of the new racial and ethnic communities in the United States and the emergence of diversity and multiculturalism as dominant fields of discourse in legal, educational, and cultural contexts.

A Second Voice
A Century of Osteopathic Medicine in Ohio
By Carol Poh Miller

Doctors of osteopathy today practice side by side with medical doctors, employing the same diagnostic and curative tools of scientific medicineu2009—u2009with a difference. Focusing on the historical experience of Ohio, historian Carol Poh Miller illuminates struggles common to osteopathic medicine nationwide as it fought to secure its place in American health care.

The Exile Mission
The Polish Political Diaspora and Polish Americans, 1939–1956
By Anna D. Jaroszyńska-Kirchmann

At midcentury, two distinct Polish immigrant groups—those Polish Americans who were descendants of economic immigrants from the turn of the twentieth century and the Polish political refugees who chose exile after World War II and the communist takeover in Poland—faced an uneasy challenge to reconcile their concepts of responsibility toward the homeland.The new arrivals did not consider themselves simply as immigrants, but rather as members of the special category of political refugees.

American Pantheon
Sculptural and Artistic Decoration of the United States Capitol
Edited by Donald R. Kennon and Thomas P. Somma

Like the ancient Roman Pantheon, the U.S. Capitol was designed by its political and aesthetic arbiters to memorialize the virtues, events, and persons most representative of the nation’s ideals—an attempt to raise a particular version of the nation’s founding to the level of myth.American Pantheon examines the influences upon not only those virtues and persons selected for inclusion in the American pantheon, but also those excluded.

Sales and Celebrations
Retailing and Regional Identity in Western New York State, 1920–1940
By Sarah Elvins

Between the two world wars, the retail world experienced tremendous changes. New forms of competition, expanded networks of communication and transportation, and the proliferation of manufactured goods posed challenges to department store and small shopkeeper alike.In western New York, and in Buffalo and Rochester in particular, retailers were a crucial part of urban life, acting as cultural brokers and civic leaders. They were also cultivators of area pride.

Extracting Appalachia
Images of the Consolidation Coal Company, 1910–1945
By Geoffrey L. Buckley

As a function of its corporate duties, the Consolidation Coal Company, one of the largest coal-mining operations in the United States during the first half of the twentieth century, had photographers take hundreds of pictures of nearly every facet of its operations. Whether for publicity images, safety procedures, or archival information, these photographs create a record that goes far beyond the purpose the company intended.In

The Paradox of Progress
Economic Change, Individual Enterprise, and Political Culture in Michigan, 1837–1878
By Martin J. Hershock

Americans have long recognized the central importance of the nineteenth-century Republican party in preserving the Union, ending slavery, and opening the way for industrial capitalism.

The Negro in the American Rebellion
His Heroism and His Fidelity
By William Wells Brown
· Edited by John David Smith

In 1863, as the Civil War raged, the escaped slave, abolitionist, and novelist William Wells Brown identified two groups most harmful to his race. “The first and most relentless,” he explained, “are those who have done them the greatest injury, by being instrumental in their enslavement and consequent degradation.

From Blackjacks to Briefcases
A History of Commercialized Strikebreaking and Unionbusting in the United States
By Robert Michael Smith

From the beginning of the Industrial Age and continuing into the twenty-first century, companies faced with militant workers and organizers have often turned to agencies that specialized in ending strikes and breaking unions. Although their secretive nature has made it difficult to fully explore the history of this industry, From Blackjacks to Briefcases does just that.By

Traitors and True Poles
Narrating a Polish-American Identity, 1880–1939
By Karen Majewski

During Poland’s century-long partition and in the interwar period of Poland’s reemergence as a state, Polish writers on both sides of the ocean shared a preoccupation with national identity. Polish-American immigrant writers revealed their persistent, passionate engagement with these issues, as they used their work to define and consolidate an essentially transnational ethnic identity that was both tied to Poland and independent of it.By

Ohio on the Move
Transportation in the Buckeye State
By H. Roger Grant

Few American states can match the rich and diverse transportation heritage of Ohio. Every major form of public conveyance eventually served the Buckeye state. From the “Canal Age” to the “Interurban Era,” Ohio emerged as a national leader. The state’s central location, abundant natural resources, impressive wealth, shrewd business leadership, and episodes of good fortune explain the dynamic nature of its transport past.Ohio

Ohio Is My Dwelling Place
Schoolgirl Embroideries, 1800–1850
By Sue Studebaker

One of the most intriguing cultural artifacts of our nation’s past was made by young girls—the embroidery sampler. In Ohio Is My Dwelling Place, American decorative arts expert Sue Studebaker documents the samplers created in Ohio prior to 1850, the girls who made them, their families, and the teachers who taught them to stitch.In

An American Colony
Regionalism and the Roots of Midwestern Culture
By Edward Watts

The Old Northwest—the region now known as the Midwest—has been largely overlooked in American cultural history, represented as a place smoothly assimilated into the expanding, manifestly-destined nation. An American Colony: Regionalism and the Roots of Midwestern Culture studies the primary texts and principal conflicts of the settlement of the Old Northwest to reveal that its entry into the nation’s culture was not without problems.

An Amulet of Greek Earth
Generations of Immigrant Folk Culture
By Helen Papanikolas

The boys and men who left their Greek valley and mountain villages in the early 1900s for America came with amulets their mothers had made for them. Some were miniature sacks attached to a necklace; more often they were merely a square of fabric enclosing the values of their lives: a piece of a holy book or a sliver of the True Cross representing their belief in Greek Orthodoxy; a thyme leaf denoting their wild terrain; a blue bead to ward off the Evil Eye; and a pinch of Greek earth.In

Flash Effect
Science and the Rhetorical Origins of Cold War America
By David J. Tietge

The ways science and technology are portrayed in advertising, in the news, in our politics, and in the culture at large inform the way we respond to these particular facts of life. The better we are at recognizing the rhetorical intentions of the purveyors of information and promoters of mass culture, the more adept we become at responding intelligently to them.Flash

American Coverlets and Their Weavers
Coverlets from the Collection of Foster and Muriel McCarl
By Clarita S. Anderson

Coverlets woven in vibrant colors of red, blue, white, and green are as popular today as they were in the nineteenth century.American Coverlets and Their Weavers is a lavishly illustrated guide to one of the premier collections of coverlets in the nation. As such, it is also an essential reference for collectors, historians, specialists in material culture, and others who are interested in American textiles.Published

The House and Senate in the 1790s
Petitioning, Lobbying, and Institutional Development
Edited by Kenneth R. Bowling and Donald R. Kennon

Amid the turbulent swirl of foreign intrigue, external and internal threats to the young nation’s existence, and the domestic partisan wrangling of the 1790s, the United States Congress solidified its role as the national legislature. The ten essays in The House and Senate in the 1790s demonstrate the mechanisms by which this bicameral legislature developed its institutional identity.

Montgomery C. Meigs and the Building of the Nation’s Capital
Edited by William C. Dickinson, Donald R. Kennon, and Dean A. Herrin

At the age of thirty-six, in 1852, Lt. Montgomery Cunningham Meigs of the Army Corps of Engineers reported to Washington, D.C., for duty as a special assistant to the chief army engineer, Gen. Joseph G. Totten. It was a fateful assignment, both for the nation’s capital and for the bright, ambitious, and politically connected West Point graduate.Meigs’s forty-year tenure in the nation’s capital was by any account spectacularly successful.

Art As Image
Prints and Promotion in Cincinnati, Ohio
Edited by Alice M. Cornell

Illustrates the spectacular technological and artistic developments in the nineteenth-century printing trade from the earliest days of the Old Northwest Territory.

Headquarters in the Brush
Blazer’s Independent Union Scouts
By Darl L. Stephenson

A comprehensive reassessment of a valiant band of Yankee soldiers

Dust Bowl, USA
Depression America and the Ecological Imagination, 1929–1941
By Brad D. Lookingbill

Whether romantic or tragic, accounts of the dramatic events surrounding the North American Dust Bowl of the “dirty thirties” unearthed anxieties buried deep in America’s ecological imagination. Moreover, the images of a landscape of fear remain embedded in the national consciousness today. In vivid form, the aesthetic of suffering captured in Dorothea Lange’s photographs and Woody Guthrie’s folk songs created the myths and memories of the Depression generation.Dust

Art and Empire
The Politics of Ethnicity in the United States Capitol, 1815–1860
By Vivien Green Fryd

The subject matter and iconography of much of the art in the U.S. Capitol forms a remarkably coherent program of the early course of North American empire, from discovery and settlement to the national development and westward expansion that necessitated the subjugation of the indigenous peoples.In Art and Empire, Vivien Green Fryd’s revealing cultural and political interpretation of the portraits, reliefs, allegories, and historical paintings commissioned for the U.S.

Managing the Counterrevolution
The United States and Guatemala, 1954–1961
By Stephen M. Streeter

The Eisenhower administration’s intervention in Guatemala is one of the most closely studied covert operations in the history of the Cold War. Yet we know far more about the 1954 coup itself than its aftermath. This book uses the concept of “counterrevolution” to trace the Eisenhower administration’s efforts to restore U.S. hegemony in a nation whose reform governments had antagonized U.S. economic interests and the local elite.Comparing the Guatemalan case to U.S.-sponsored

The Documentary Heritage of Ohio
Edited by Phillip R. Shriver and Clarence E. Wunderlin Jr.

Key to the successful teaching and learning of history is its personalization. In presenting documents that help Ohio’s rich history come alive in the minds of its readers, this book has purposely sought to provide eyewitness, first-person narratives that will make the reader want to turn the page and keep on reading.

Sowing the American Dream
How Consumer Culture Took Root in the Rural Midwest
By David Blanke

From 1840 to 1900, midwestern Americans experienced firsthand the profound economic, cultural, and structural changes that transformed the nation from a premodern, agrarian state to one that was urban, industrial, and economically interdependent. Midwestern commercial farmers found themselves at the heart of these changes. Their actions and reactions led to the formation of a distinctive and particularly democratic consumer ethos, which is still being played out today.By

West Virginia Quilts and Quiltmakers
Echoes from the Hills
By Fawn Valentine

Tucked away in the Appalachian Mountains of West Virginia, preserved for generations, handmade bed quilts are windows into the past. In 1983, three West Virginia county extension agents discussed the need to locate and document their state’s historic quilts. Mary Nell Godbey, Margaret Meador, and Mary Lou Schmidt joined with other concerned women to found the West Virginia Heritage Quilt Search.The

The United States Capitol
Designing and Decorating a National Icon
Edited by Donald R. Kennon

The United States Capitol is a national cultural icon, and among the most visually recognized seats of government in the world. The past quarter century has witnessed an explosion of scholarly interest in the art and architectural history of the Capitol. The emergence of the historic preservation movement and the maturation of the discipline of art conservation have refocused attention on the Capitol as the American “temple of liberty.”

Revisiting U.S. Trade Policy
Decisions in Perspective
Edited by Alfred E. Eckes Jr.

In trade policy, as in many other areas of public policy, decision makers often confront present and future problems with little understanding of how similar disputes were resolved in the past. Too often, busy public officials had no time to write or record negotiating histories. Revisiting U.S. Trade Policy, which is certain to become a classic in the literature of trade negotiations, is just such a record.Built on the oral histories of thirty-five former U.S.

Staking Her Claim
The Life of Belinda Mulrooney, Klondike and Alaska Entrepreneur
By Melanie J. Mayer and Robert N. DeArmond

If Horatio Alger had imagined a female heroine in the same mold as one of the young male heroes in his rags-to-riches stories, she would have looked like Belinda Mulrooney. Smart, ambitious, competitive, and courageous, Belinda Mulrooney was destined through her legendary pioneering in the wilds of the Yukon basin to found towns and many businesses. She built two fortunes, supported her family, was an ally to other working women, and triumphed in what was considered a man’s world.In

Ohio’s First Peoples
By James H. O'Donnell

Ohio’s First Peoples depicts the Native Amerxadicans of the Buckeye State from the time of the Hopewell peoples to the forced removal of the Wyandots in the 1840s.

Inventing Congress
Origins and Establishment of the First Federal Congress
Edited by Kenneth R. Bowling and Donald R. Kennon

On March 4, 1789, New York City’s church bells pealed, cannons fired, and flags snapped in the wind to celebrate the date set for the opening of the First Federal Congress. In many ways the establishment of Congress marked the culmination of the American Revolution as the ship of state was launched from the foundation of the legislative system outlined in Article I of the Constitution.Inventing

Mountain People in a Flat Land
A Popular History of Appalachian Migration to Northeast Ohio, 1940–1965
By Carl E. Feather

First popular history of Appalachian migration to one community—Ashtabula County, an industrial center in the fabled “best location in the nation.”

Good-Bye to Old Peking
The Wartime Letters of U.S. Marine Captain John Seymour Letcher, 1937–1939
Edited by Katie Letcher Lyle and Roger B. Jeans

For two and a half years (1937-1939), Captain John Seymour Letcher commanded a company of the U.S. Embassy Marine Guard in Peking. During that time, he wrote a series of letters to his parents in Virginia describing the life of a Westerner in the former imperial city. During that same time, China was invaded by Japan.Captain Letcher describes the flavor of life in pre-Communist China—the food, servants, cold Peking winters and torrid summers, hunting, and excursions to the major tourist sites.B

Athens, Ohio
The Village Years
By Robert L. Daniel

In a lively style peppered with firsthand accounts by the people who made Athens, author Robert L. Daniel narrates his tale with wry humor and a sharp eye for detail.

Argentina, the United States, and the Anti-Communist Crusade in Central America, 1977–1984
By Ariel Armony
· Foreword by Thomas W. Walker

Ariel Armony focuses, in this study, on the role played by Argentina in the anti–Communist crusade in Central America. This systematic examination of Argentina’s involvement in the Central American drama of the late 1970s and early 1980s fine–tunes our knowledge of a major episode of the Cold War era.Basing his study on exhaustive research in the United States, Argentina, and Nicaragua, Armony adroitly demolishes several key assumptions that have shaped the work of scholars in U.S.

Lionel Sotheby’s Great War
Diaries and Letters from the Western Front
By Lionel Sotheby
· Edited by Donald C. Richter
· Introduction by Donald C. Richter
· Foreword by Peter H. Liddle

The “butterfly” that emerged in World War I trench warfare in 1915 aspired to kill: “I cannot explain,” the diary continues. “It comes unseen and makes you oblivious of almost everything at times, save one intense desire to kill, kill, kill, the Germans.”Lionel Sotheby’s diary and letters are a compelling first-person account of the harrowing experiences of the young British lieutenant at the Western Front. His writing reveals constant peril, hourly discomfort, and gruesome injuries.

Making of Legends
More True Stories of Frontier America
By Mark Dugan

Some of the American West’s grandest legends are about people who in reality were remorseless killers, robbers, and bandits. These outlaws flourished during the 1800s and gained notoriety throughout the following century. How did their fame persist, and what has inspired the publishing, movie, and television industries to recreate their fictionalized careers over and over again?Mark Dugan brings reality to the forefront in The Making of Legends.

The Centennial Atlas of Athens County, Ohio
Illustrations, History, Statistics
Edited by Fred W. Bush

Unique and invaluable portrait of a bustling turn–of–the–century community.

Upper Mississippi River Rafting Steamboats
By Edward A. Mueller

As a Wisconsin historical marker explains:“After 1837 the vast timber resources of northern Wisconsin were eagerly sought by settlers moving into the mid-Mississippi valley. By 1847 there were more than thirty saw-mills on the Wisconsin, Chippewa, and St. Croix river systems, cutting largely Wisconsin white pine.During long winter months, logging crews felled and stacked logs on the frozen rivers. Spring thaws flushed the logs down the streams toward the Mississippi River.

Way’s Packet Directory, 1848–1994
Passenger Steamboats of the Mississippi River System since the Advent of Photography in Mid-Continent America
By Frederick Way Jr.
· Foreword by Joseph W. Rutter

The first Mississippi steamboat was a packet, the New Orleans, a sidewheeler built at Pittsburgh in 1811, designed for the New Orleans-Natchez trade. Packets dominated during the first forty years of steam, providing the quickest passenger transportation throughout mid-continent America. The packets remained fairly numerous even into the first two decades of the twentieth century when old age or calamity overtook them.