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Oliver Wendell Holmes escaped death by a fraction of an inch at the Battle of Ball’s Bluff and Antietam. Thereafter he lived with unwavering moral courage, unremitting scorn for dogmas, and insatiable

Born in late nineteenth-century Georgia, Elizabeth, Grace, and Katharine Du Pre Lumpkin grew up in a culture of white supremacy. Their father was a member of the KKK; the older girls performed at rall

Sigfried Giedion (1888-1968) and Carola Giedion-Welcker (1893-1979) were among the most distinguished and influential scholars of art and architectural history during the 20th century's earlier dacade

The tale of the Shining Path may be the most gripping saga in modern Latin American history, but its full story has never been told. Described by a U.S. State Department cable as “cold-blooded and bes

There are few places where mobility has shaped identity as widely as the American West, but some locations and populations sit at its major crossroads, maintaining control over place and mobility, lab

The history of public policy in postwar America tends to fixate on developments at the national level, overlooking the crucial work done by individual states in the 1960s and ’70s. In this book,

The black ghetto is thought of as a place of urban decay and social disarray. Like the historical ghetto of Venice, it is perceived as a space of confinement, one imposed on black America by whites. I

Empire’s Tracks boldly reframes the history of the transcontinental railroad from the perspectives of the Cheyenne, Lakota, and Pawnee Native American tribes, and the Chinese migrants

As much as dogs, cats, or any domestic animal, horses exemplify the vast range of human-animal interactions. Horses have long been deployed to help with a variety of human activities—from racing

In November 1978, a group of Haitians sailed their small wooden vessel into the harbor of the US Naval Station at Guantánamo Bay. After replenishing their stores of food and water, they departe

How digital media are transforming Arab culture, literature, and politicsIn recent years, Arab activists have confronted authoritarian regimes both on the street and online, leaking videos and exposin

All sorts of literary encounters and exchanges took place between China and the United States in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, involving an unlikely array of figures including canonica

The Beatles and Duke Ellington’s Orchestra stand as the two greatest examples of collaboration in music history. Duke University musicologist Thomas Brothers delivers a portrait of the creative proces

ABC Sports shaped how the world consumes sport. The American Broadcasting Company sports division is behind some of network television’s most significant practices, celebrated personalities, and

On the battlefields of World War II, with their fellow soldiers as the only shield between life and death, a generation of American men found themselves connecting with each other in new and profound

Forced to contend with unprecedented levels of psychological trauma during World War II, the United States military began sponsoring a series of nontheatrical films designed to educate and even rehabi

Much is at stake when we choose a word for a form of violence: whether a conflict is labeled civil war or genocide, whether we refer to “enhanced interrogation techniques” or to “torture,” whether a p

After Sept. 11, 2001, George W. Bush declared, “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.” Bush’s assertion was not simply jingoist bravado—it encapsulates the civilizationalist moralism

Today, transparency is a widely heralded value, and the U.S. Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) is often held up as one of the transparency movement’s canonical achievements. Yet while many view the la

Eunuch and Emperor in the Great Age of Qing Rule offers a new interpretation of eunuchs and their connection to imperial rule in the first century and a half of the Qing dynasty (1644–1800). Thi

Beyond the Pink Tide considers a wave of artistic and curatorial efforts and social movements that refuse national borders to think hemispherically. In modeling a transnational American Studies, the b

Today, predicting the impact of human activities on the earth’s climate hinges on tracking interactions among phenomena of radically different dimensions, from the molecular to the planetary. Cl

The medieval church was founded on and governed by concepts of faith and trust--but not in the way that is popularly assumed. Offering a radical new interpretation of the institutional church and its

Two years ago, Graham Robb moved to a place of legend called the Debatable Land, an independent territory that once served as a buffer between Scotland and England. The oldest detectable territorial d

Few economists can claim the influence—or fame—of F. A. Hayek. Winner of the Nobel Prize, Hayek was one of the most consequential thinkers of the twentieth century, his views on the free m

Revolutionary ideas on how to use markets to bring about fairness and prosperity for allMany blame today's economic inequality, stagnation, and political instability on the free market. The solution i

Everywhere we look, people are using fashion to communicate self and society—who they are, and where they belong. Transglobal Fashion Narratives presents an international, interdisciplinary analysis o

The bitter feud between President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Chief Justice Earl Warren framed the tumultuous future of the modern civil rights movement. Eisenhower was a gradualist who wanted to coax wh

Following her bestselling Life Along the Silk Road, Susan Whitfield widens her exploration of the great cultural highway with a new captivating portrait focusing on material things. Silk, Slaves, and

Extending back to the first demonstrations of 2011, No Turning Back dissects the tangle of ideologies and allegiances that make up the Syrian conflict. As protests ignited in Daraa, some citizens were brimming with a sense of possibility. A privileged young man named Suleiman posted videos of the protests online, full of hope for justice and democracy. A father of two named Mohammad, secretly radicalized and newly released from prison, saw a darker opportunity in the unrest. When violence broke out in Homs, a poet named Abu Azzam became an unlikely commander in a Free Syrian Army militia. The regime's brutal response disrupted a family in Idlib province, where a nine-year-old girl opened the door to a military raid that caused her father to flee. As the bombings increased and roads grew more dangerous, these people's lives intertwined in unexpected ways.Rania Abouzeid brings readers deep inside Assad's prisons, to covert meetings where foreign states and organizations manipulated the r

The Music of Tragedy offers a new approach to the study of classical Greek theater by examining the use of musical language, imagery, and performance in the late work of Euripides. Naomi Weiss demonst

Why we need to think more like economists to successfully combat terrorismIf we are to correctly assess the root causes of terrorism and successfully address the threat, we must think more like econom

When we talk about Presocratic philosophy, we are speaking about the origins of Greek philosophy and Western rationality itself. But what exactly does it mean to talk about "Presocratic philosophy" in

Why—against his mentor’s exhortations to publish—did Charles Darwin take twenty years to reveal his theory of evolution by natural selection? In Darwin’s Evolving Identity, Ali

Thomas Kuhn and Karl Popper are believed by many who study science to be the two key thinkers of the twentieth century. Each addressed the question of how scientific theories change, but they came to

In popular understanding, the Ku Klux Klan is a hateful white supremacist organization. In Ku Klux Kulture, Felix Harcourt argues that in the 1920s the self-proclaimed Invisible Empire had an even wid

We are squandering our planet’s natural capital—its biodiversity, water and soil, and energy sources—at a blistering pace. Major changes must be made to steer our planet and people away from our curre

Digital tools have long been a transformative part of academia, enhancing the classroom and changing the way we teach. Yet there is a way that academia may be able to benefit more from the digital rev

Why the paradigm of the world-class university is an implausible dream for most institutions of higher educationUniversities have become major actors on the global stage. Yet, as they strive to be "wo

A committed Lutheran excommunicated from his own church, a friend to Catholics and Calvinists alike, a layman who called himself a “priest of God,” a Copernican in a world where Ptolemy st