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Playhouse Square and the Cleveland Renaissance

| Filed under: Architecture & Urban Renewal, Recent Releases, Regional Interest, Theater Studies
Playhouse Square and the Cleveland Renaissance cover

John Vacha is the first to write a comprehensive, in-depth account of Playhouse Square’s history, beginning with the Square’s 1921 opening and describing how the COVID-19 pandemic once again left its theaters temporarily empty before their triumphant reopenings in 2022. Richly illustrated and featuring interviews with the central figures involved in saving the Square, Playhouse Square and the Cleveland Renaissance is a powerful story that will appeal to theater history buffs and preservationists alike—reminding readers of the significant role the performing arts serve in shaping a city’s culture.

 


Tabernacles in the Wilderness

| Filed under: Interpreting the Civil War: Texts and Contexts, Recent Releases, Religion, U.S. History
Tabernacles in the Wilderness cover

Tabernacles in the Wilderness discusses the work of the United States Christian Commission (USCC), a civilian relief agency established by northern evangelical Protestants to minister to Union troops during the American Civil War. USCC workers saw in the Civil War not only a wrathful judgment from God for the sins of the nation but an unparalleled opportunity to save the souls of US citizens and perfect the nation. Thus, the workers set about proselytizing and distributing material aid to Union soldiers with undaunted and righteous zeal.

 


Reading Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls

| Filed under: Literature & Literary Criticism, Reading Hemingway, Recent Releases
Reading Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls cover

Published in 1940, Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls is widely considered a masterpiece of war literature. A bestseller upon its release, the novel has long been both admired and ridiculed for its depiction of Robert Jordan’s military heroism and wartime romance. Yet its validation of seemingly conflicting narratives and its rendering of the intricate world its characters inhabit, as well as its dense historical, literary, and biographical allusions, have made it a work that remains a focus of interest and study.

 


Adelbert Ames, the Civil War, and the Creation of Modern America

| Filed under: Civil War Era, Civil War Soldiers and Strategies, Military History, Recent Releases, U.S. History
Adelbert Ames, the Civil War, and the Creation of Modern America Cover

A central figure in Reconstruction-era politics, Adelbert Ames and his contributions during a significant and uncertain time in American history are the focus of Michael J. Megelsh’s fascinating study. As Megelsh discusses, Ames’s life took many compelling turns. Born on Maine’s rocky shore in 1835, he served as a Union general during the American Civil War and was heralded as one of the young stars whose leadership was integral in helping the Union to victory. He briefly remained in the army after the conflict, stationed in Mississippi, where he entered the political arena.

 


The Radical Advocacy of Wendell Phillips

| Filed under: American Abolitionism and Antislavery, Justice Studies, Recent Releases, U.S. History
The Radical Advocacy of Wendell Phillips Cover

In this brisk, engaging exploration of 19th-century radical reformer and abolitionist Wendell Phillips, Peter Charles Hoffer makes the case that Phillips deserves credit as the nation’s first public interest lawyer, someone who led the antebellum crusade against slavery and championed First Amendment rights and equality for all Americans, including Black people and women.

 


Reading Hemingway’s The Garden of Eden

| Filed under: Literature & Literary Criticism, Reading Hemingway, Recent Releases
Reading Hemingway’s The Garden of Eden Cover. Carl Eby

In Reading Hemingway’s The Garden of Eden, Carl P. Eby examines Hemingway’s original unrevised manuscript in relation to Scribner’s highly edited edition. The product of 30 years of research, this volume is the first to clarify for readers which parts of the original work had been retained, altered, and discarded in the publisher’s text. No other treatment of the text has been so thorough in its analysis and annotations. This volume gives the Scribner’s edition and the original manuscript equal consideration, helping readers to better understand the relationship between both versions of the novel.

 


From the Wilderness to Appomattox

| Filed under: American History, Civil War Era, Civil War Soldiers and Strategies, Military History, Recent Releases
From the Wilderness to Appomattox cover. By Edward A. Altemos

In early 1864, many heavy artillery regiments in the Civil War were garrisoning the Washington defenses, including the Fifteenth New York. At the same time, newly minted Union general in chief Ulysses S. Grant sought to replenish the ranks of the Army of the Potomac, and the Fifteenth became one of the first outfits dispatched to Major General George Meade at Brandy Station.

Drawing on a wealth of previously unmined primary sources, Edward A. Altemos pays tribute to the Fifteenth, other heavy artillery regiments, and the thousands of immigrants who contributed to the Union army’s victory.

 


The Creation of a Crusader

| Filed under: American Abolitionism and Antislavery, Recent Releases, Regional Interest
The Creation of a Crusader cover. David C. Crago

More than 175 years after his death, Senator Thomas Morris has remained one of the few early national champions of political and constitutional antislavery without a biography devoted to him. In this first expansive study of Morris’s life and contributions, David C. Crago persuasively argues that historians have wrongly marginalized Morris’s role in the early antislavery movement.

 


The Political Transformation of David Tod

| Filed under: Recent Releases, Regional Interest, U.S. History, Understanding Civil War History
The Political Transformation of David Tod cover. By Joseph Lambert Jr.

Before his election to the state’s executive office in 1861, David Tod was widely regarded as Ohio’s most popular Democrat. Tod rose to prominence in the old Western Reserve, rejecting the political influence of his well-known father, a former associate justice of Ohio’s Supreme Court, a previous member of the Federalist Party, and a new, devoted Whig. As a fierce Democratic Party lion, the younger Tod thrilled followers with his fearless political attacks on Whig adversaries and was considered an unlikely figure in the battle to keep the Union intact.

 


Fraternal Light

| Filed under: Poetry, Recent Releases, Wick First Book
Cover for "Fraternal Light: On Painting While Black."

Fraternal Light: On Painting While Black is a lyric evocation of the life and work of the great African American artist Beauford Delaney. These poems pay homage to Delaney’s resilience and ingenuity in the face of profound adversity. Although his work never garnered the acclaim it deserves—but is finally receiving—Delaney was well known and highly respected in African American cultural circles, among bohemian writers and artists based in Greenwich Village from the 1930s to the early 1950s, and in Parisian avant-garde and expatriate enclaves from the mid-1950s to the mid-1970s.

 


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