“I like Victoria Redel’s poems because of their braveness and their lucidity….There is no flight here to incoherence; the poems speak plainly and, in some cases, beautifully. The music is lovely and the tone, distinctive….” —Gerald Stern
The Alternate History: Refiguring Historical Time examines alternate history science fiction using the eschatological, genetic, entropic, and teleological historical models. Hellekson’s original approach explains much of the appeal of alternate history and distinguishes among the many varieties of the genre. In her measured consideration of a range of writers, Hellekson displays a deep and broad knowledge of the major works in this genre—those by famous or neglected writers alike.
This new study reveals that the nineteen stories that comprised the original Tales of Soldiers and Civilians consist of carefully developed and interrelated meanings and themes that can only be fully understood by examining the complex circumstances of their original productions. By considering each of the nineteen tales in the order in which they were first published and by drawing heavily on contemporary related materials, Blume re-creates much of the original milieu into which Bierce carefully placed his short stories. Blume systematically examines many of Bierce’s editing flaws, exposing that Bierce’s decisions often weakened the original literary merits of his stories. Ultimately this story reveals, tale by tale and layer by layer, that the nineteen stories included in Bierce’s 1892 collection were masterpieces of fiction, destined to become classics. Historians and Civil War enthusiasts, as well as literary scholars, will welcome this new study.
The National Road was the first major improved highway in the United States built by the federal government. Built between 1811 and 1837, this 620-mile road connected the Potomac and Ohio Rivers and was the main avenue to the West. Roger Pickenpaugh’s comprehensive account is based on detailed archival research into documents that few scholars have examined, including sources from the National Archives, and details the promotion, construction, and use of this crucially important thoroughfare.
A small area of western Pennsylvania around Pittsburgh has produced almost 25 percent of the modern era quarterbacks enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. That percentage is wildly disproportionate to the number of superstar quarterbacks any one state might claim, let alone a mere sliver of a state—an area representing just one-fifth of one percent of the total country.
In this collection of 11 essays, individualism is placed in a comparative, trans-national context that differentiates the American national experience from its European cultural heritage. The authors analyze meanings and usages of individualism in Europe—particularly France, Germany, and Great Britain—in order to clarify those found in American society. Also examined are the limitations of the concept in relation to minority groups and women. A 19th-century perspective of individualism is the central focus of American Chameleon, but the final chapter adds a contemporary dimension. Editors and authors Richard Curry and Lawrence Goodheart herein offer scholars, students and interested citizens new interpretations and a deeper understanding of the past, present, and future of American society itself.
The dispatches from Lord Richard Bickerton Pemell Lyons, Second Baron, British Envoy Extraordinary in Washington, D.C., during the Civil War offer insight into contemporaneous Anglo–American relations. The five-year period covered in these three volumes witnessed the fierce and deadly battles of the war fought both in the North and in the South, the shifting moods of public opinion and patriotic fervor, the changing economic conditions, and the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln.
The three volumes of The American Civil War through British Eyes make available important, previously unpublished documents that fill a void for students and scholars of the war. Lyon’s dispatches offer a unique perspective on America during its bitterest test of national unity. Through them the Civil War unfolds not in retrospect but through the eyes of a contemporary observer.
The dispatches included in Volume 1 of The American Civil War through British Eyes offer insight into contemporary Anglo-American relations. This period witnessed the election of Abraham Lincoln, the secession crisis, the formation of the Confederacy, and the first military confrontations of the war. It also raised a host of problems for Great Britain’s relationships with both the Union and the Confederacy, such as how the war would affect British nationals residing in the United States, what course official British policy should take regarding diplomatic recognition of the Confederacy, and the effect that the likely interruption of exports might have on British manufacturing.
In almost all these essays, newly released materials in presidential libraries and in the National Archives have been used. The result is a history of the past 40 years of NATO from an American perspective, placing the alliance within the larger frame of America’s foreign policy as a superpower. The historians’ interpretations benefit from their intimacy with cognate issues on which each has written over the years. Whatever their individual interpretations, each reveals the important role. NATO has played in fashioning the “American Century.”
