Bartolome de Las Casas championed the rights of the Indians of Mexico and Central America, disputing a widely held belief that they were "beasts" to be enslaved. In a dramatic debate in 1550 with Juan
This classic study, now revised and updated, shows how scientific calculations can be used to improve the understanding, design, and tuning of woodwind instruments. A powerful tool for correcting tuni
Today, John Deere is remembered-some say mistakenly-as the inventor of the steel plow. Who was this legendary man and how did he create the internationally renowned company that still bears his name?
The traumas and controversies of the 1960s—the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War, and the pervasive antiauthoritarian spirit so evident on college campuses—infiltrated American public high school
To the batters who faced him, pitcher Sal Maglie looked like the hurler from hell. Tall and sinister in appearance, with glowering dark eyes and a formidable five-o’clock shadow, the famed r
In an era when minorities struggled for recognition, LaDonna Harris and Wilma Mankiller furthered the interests of Native Americans and forged a new place for women in politics by astutely playing acc
Through press coverage, U.S. first ladies have become some of the most prominent and recognized figures in American politics. While the U.S. Constitution doesn’t enumerate the responsibilities
From the late 1940s to the early 1970s, farmers in the Corn Belt transformed their region into a new, industrial powerhouse of large-scale production, mechanization, specialization, and efficiency. Ma
Despite the numerous studies of Frank Lloyd Wright’s life and architecture, little has been published about his life in relation to the communities that dominated his life. Wright, a fervent be
At the end of World War I, the United States Army—despite its recent experience with trenches, machine guns, barbed wire, airplanes, and even tanks—maintained a horse-mounted cavalry from
In this original study, Kurt Graham sheds light on both an understudied institution and an underappreciated period in our nation’s judicial history with an examination of the federal judiciary&
Knox College’s Old Main—a national landmark and the only extant building that was a site of the Lincoln-Douglas debates—is a campus treasure with a secret. Built in 1857, Old Main w
One of the 20th century’s most prescient critics of the role of the U.S. dollar in the global economy, Jacques Rueff (1896–1978) was also one of Europe’s foremost free market think
Loan sharks may conjure up an image of tough guys in fedoras looking to make a profit off of desperate people in dire financial straits, but in reality, lenders who advance small sums of cash at high
Collected almost 100 years ago, these timeless tales represent the diversity and richness of American Indian cultures from around the Great Lakes, the Midwest, and the Mississippi River valley. They r
Identifying more than 250 top sites for birding within a 65-mile radius from downtown Chicago, this useful guide provides maps, directions, and other information essential for discovering the birds of
Among the hundreds of women who, in disguise, enlisted to serve as men during the Civil War, only Sarah Edmonds is known to have written a memoir recounting her experiences. As "Franklin Thompso
For more than three thousand years, the mysterious events surrounding the death of Ramesses III have puzzled historians and students of ancient Egypt. Now, archaeologist Susan Redford investigates the
