Conrad Wise Chapman (1842-1910) is unique among Civil War artists: he painted and sketched while on duty as a Confederate soldier who served in three theaters of the war. Chapman’s first-hand knowledge is evident in his work. Ben Bassham has written both a critical study of Chapman’s art and a biography, incorporating Chapman’s correspondence and Civil War memoirs.
The Conscience of a City and a Nation is the first comprehensive biography of Paul Block Jr., son of a publishing giant who owned newspapers across the United States. Block was passionate about studying chemistry, which he studied at Columbia and Yale. However, following his father’s death, he stepped in to help run papers the Blocks owned in Pittsburgh and Toledo. Eventually, Block and his family relocated to Toledo, one of Ohio’s up-and-coming cities.
Continuous innovation and experimentation with the materials used in constructing textiles, apparel, and accessories creates an ever-growing challenge for professional curators and collectors. Recognizing problematic fibers, dyes, finishes, and fabric and yarn constructions is crucial for maintaining objects’ appearance, minimizing deterioration, and isolating those that are potentially harmful to other objects.
The Union states of what is now the Midwest have received far less attention from historians than those of the East, and much of Michigan’s Civil War story remains untold. The eloquent letters of James W. King shed light on a Civil War regiment that played important roles in the battles of Stones River, Chickamauga, and Missionary Ridge. King enlisted in the 11th Michigan in 1861 as a private and rose to the rank of quartermaster sergeant. His correspondence continues into the era of Reconstruction, when he tried his hand at raising cotton in Tennessee and Alabama and found himself caught up in the social and political upheavals of the postwar South.
“Found in these pages is simple profundity, desire unmitigated, the things we wish for each other, the science of absolutes so easy to understand, and so devastating: these poems put complex moments in such a straightforward context that we grasp not simply the words but the full feeling as something we have felt in some kind of similar vocabulary.” —Alberto Ríos, Judge
Containing Coexistence: America, Russia, and the “Finnish Solution,” 1945–1956, is the first full-scale study of Finland’s role in Soviet-American relations during the onset of the cold war. Cold war Finland was an enigma. Defeated by the Soviet Union in World War II, the country appeared ripe for joining the “people’s democracies” in 1945, when the […]
In Conundrums for the Long Week-End, Robert McGregor and Ethan Lewis explore how Sayers used her fictional hero to comment on, and come to terms with, the social upheaval of the time: world wars, the crumbling of the privileged aristocracy, the rise of democracy, and the expanding struggle of women for equality.
In Corpsmen: Letters from Korea, the Chappell twins gathered together their letters to chronicle their experiences as medical corpsmen in the First Marine Division during the Korean War. From boot camp to Bethesda Naval Hospital and on the Fleet Marine Force training and eventually the front line, and then in Indochina, the brothers kept in contact with their family in Ohio, offering firsthand narratives of their adventures.
In Cosmographical Glasses Constance Relihan examines the ways in which sixteenth-century English texts—traveler’s reports, ethnographic studies, and geographic guides—provide the foundation for how fictional prose of the period envisions the locations in which its tales are set. Relihan suggests that this nonfictional discourse becomes central to how the fictional prose of the period imagines cultural identity, fictional purpose, and gender identity.
The Cost of Freedom: Voicing a Movement after Kent State 1970 is a multi-genre collection describing the May 4, 1970, shootings at Kent State University, the aftermath, and the impact on wider calls for peace and justice. Fifty years after the National Guard killed four unarmed students, Susan J. Erenrich has gathered moving stories of violence, peace, and reflection, demonstrating the continued resonance of the events and the need for sustained discussion. This anthology includes poetry, personal narratives, photographs, songs, and testimonies—some written by eyewitnesses to the day of the shootings—as well as speeches from recent commemoration events and items related to the designation of the site on the National Register of Historic Places in 2016.
