The Athletic Crusade is the first book to systematically analyze the role of sports in the expansion of U.S. empire from the 1890s through World War II. Gerald R. Gems details how white, Anglo-Saxon P
The explosive proliferation of pictures in advertising and pop culture, mass media, and cyberspace following World War II, along with the profusion of critical thinking that tries to make sense of it,
History is not just about great personalities, wars, and revolutions; it is also about the subtle aspects of more ordinary matters. On a day-to-day basis the aspects of life that most preoccupied peop
For Nancy Lord, what began as a yearning for adventure and a childhood fascination with a wild and distant land culminated in a move to Alaska in the early 1970s. Here she discovered the last place in
While some cultural critics are pronouncing the death of the novel, a whole generation of novelists have turned to other media with curiosity rather than fear. These novelists are not simply incorpora
For the Baltimore Orioles, the glory days stretched to decades. Through the 1960s and 1970s, the team arguably had the best players, the best manager, the best Minor League teams, the best scouts and
Covering nearly twenty thousand square miles, the Sandhills of Nebraska is a rich and layered region that is home to one of the most productive ranching areas in the country. In 2008 and 2009, photog
When paratroopers invade Children in Reindeer Woods, a "temporary home for children," and kill everyone except eleven-year-old Billie before turning on one another, the last soldier decides to adopt t
At a crucial time in American history, narratives of women in command or imperiled at sea contributed to the construction of a national rhetoric. Robin Miskolcze makes her case by way of careful readi
The operation known as “Market-Garden”—made famous in the book and film A Bridge Too Far—was the largest airborne assault in history up to that time, a high-risk Allied invasion of enemy territory tha
In 1937, when local beer baron Emil Sick stepped in, the Seattle Indians were a struggling minor-league baseball team teetering on collapse. Moved to mix baseball and beer by his good friend and fello
Of all the teams in the annals of baseball, only a select few can lay claim to historic significance. One of those teams is the 1947 Brooklyn Dodgers, the first racially integrated Major League team o
The Whirlwind of War builds on the great themes and follows many of the important figures who were introduced in The Approaching Fury. Stephen B. Oates’s riveting narrative brings to life the complex
The average pitcher has about a .000645 chance of throwing a no-hitter. In the spring of 1938, Cincinnati Reds rookie pitcher Johnny Vander Meer pitched two, back to back. The feat has never been dupl
The Brotherhood, a secret society that meets in dreams, seeks to intervene in pivotal events of the past, as their story is told through a series of historical documents.
At the dawn of the roaring twenties, baseball was struggling to overcome two of its darkest moments: the death of a player during a game and the revelations of the 1919 Black Sox scandal. At this crit
The librarian walks the streets of her beloved Paris. An old lady with a limp and an accent, she is invisible to most. Certainly no one recognizes her as the warrior and revolutionary she was, when ag
Lee Martin tells us in his memoir, “I was never meant to come along. My parents married late. My father was thirty-eight, my mother forty-one. When he found out she was pregnant, he asked the doctor,
Inspired by a deep passion for wine, an Italian heritage, and a desire for a land somewhat wilder than his home in southern France, Robert V. Camuto set out to explore Sicily’s emerging wine scene. Wh
After a childhood of microwaved meat and saturated fat, Matthew Gavin Frank got serious about food. His “research” ultimately led him to Barolo, Italy (pop. 646), where, living out of a tent in the ga
What made France into an imperialist nation, ruler of a global empire with millions of dependent subjects overseas? Historians have sought answers to this question in the nation’s political situation
Long before the Boston Tea Party, where colonists staged a revolutionary act by masquerading as Indians, people looked to Native Americans for the symbols, imagery, and acts that showed what it meant
Belgium was a small, neutral country without a colonial tradition when King Leopold II ceded the Congo, his personal property, to the state in 1908. For the next half century Belgium not only ruled an
Volume 1: What made France into an imperialist nation, ruler of a global empire with millions of dependent subjects overseas? Historians have sought answers to this question in the nation’s political
North African immigrants, once confined to France’s social and cultural margins, have become a strong presence in France’s national life. Similarly, descendants of immigrants from Morocco, Algeria, an
Montana Memories is the life story of a mixed-blood Indian woman in western Montana and southern Alberta during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Born in 1866 to a white trader and a
Violence was prominent in France’s conquest of a colonial empire, and the use of force was integral to its control and regulation of colonial territories. What, if anything, made such violence distinc
When gold was discovered in the far northern regions of Alaska and the Yukon in the late nineteenth century, thousands of individuals headed north to strike it rich. This massive movement required a v
The 4th United States Colored Troops (USCT) regiment saw considerable action in the eastern theater of operations from late 1863 to mid-1865. The regiment—drawn largely from freedmen and liberated sla
Just as the explosive growth of digital media has led to ever-expanding narrative possibilities and practices, so these new electronic modes of storytelling have, in their own turn, demanded a rapid a
Stories engage our emotions. We’ve known this at least since the days of Plato and Aristotle. What this book helps us to understand now is how our own emotions fundamentally organize and orient storie
Distributed by the University of Nebraska Press for Caxton PressAs a teenager, Cecil Andrus dropped out of college after his first year and drove off with his girlfriend to get married in Reno. The ye
John Schulian, a much-honored sportswriter for nearly forty years, takes us back to a time when our greatest athletes stood before us as human beings, not remote gods. In this compelling collection, S
Both a tribute to the unique experiences of individual Native Americans and a celebration of the values that draw American Indians together, All Indians Do Not Live in Teepees (or Casinos) explores co
When Tiffany Murano’s parents, French expatriates in Africa, send her to a Catholic boarding school in France, her homeland feels nothing like home. In leaving colonial Africa, she loses the natural w
There is the mythology of the Green Berets, of their clandestine, special operations as celebrated in story and song. And then there is the reality of one soldier’s experience, the day-to-day loss and
Joel Sartore has spent twenty years taking pictures for National Geographic magazine and has been a contributor to CBS News Sunday Morning since 2005, harmonizing words and images on topics ranging fr
Winner of the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Fiction, Greg Hrbek’s Destroy All Monsters, and Other Stories is a collection that explores what it means to be human—and inhuman. These ten stories have w
Young Harriet’s father sells her as a slave to settle his gambling debt with an eccentric Indian—and her story is just beginning. Part Huck Finn, part True Grit, Harriet’s story of her encounter with
In its infancy, major league baseball was anyone’s game, open to a dizzying array of rogues and scamps, athletic giants and captains of industry, hustlers, managers, and umpires who transformed club-b
