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After the Dream: Black and White Southerners since 1965
Martin Luther King's 1965 address from Montgomery, Alabama, the center of much racial conflict at the time and the location of the well-publicized bus boycott a decade earlier, is often considered by historians to be the culmination of the civil rights era in American history. In his momentous speech, King declared that segregation was “on its deathbed” and that the movement had already achieved significant milestones. Although the civil rights movement had won many battles in the struggle for racial equality by the mid-1960s, including legislation to guarantee black voting rights and to desegregate public accommodations, the fight to implement ...Read More
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Lincoln on Trial: Southern Civilians and the Law of War
In light of recent controversies and legal actions related to America's treatment of enemy prisoners in the Middle East and Guantánamo Bay, the regulation of government during wartime has become a volatile issue on the global scene. By today's standards, Abraham Lincoln's adherence to the laws of war could be considered questionable, and his critics, past and present, have not hesitated to charge that he was a war criminal. This book conducts an extensive analysis of Lincoln's leadership throughout the Civil War as he struggled to balance his own humanity against the demands of his generals. The author specifically scrutinizes ...Read More
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Cowboy Conservatism: Texas and the Rise of the Modern Right
This book is about political change as it evolved in one of America's largest and most important states during the tumultuous seventeen-year period between John F. Kennedy's assassination in Dallas and Ronald Reagan's ascension to the presidency in 1980. Partisan realignment is the most obvious aspect of that change. Texas was once as solidly Democratic as any state in the nation. By the end of the twentieth century, it was among the most solidly Republican. A simplistic analysis of this transformation based in large part on the perception that Texas has always been a conservative place, might suggest that—as Ronald ...Read More
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Congressional Ambivalence: The Political Burdens of Constitutional Authority
Is the United States Congress dead, alive, or trapped in a moribund cycle? When confronted with controversial policy issues, members of Congress struggle to satisfy conflicting legislative, representative, and oversight duties. These competing goals, along with the pressure to satisfy local constituents, cause members of Congress to routinely cede power on a variety of policies, express regret over their loss of control, and later return to the habit of delegating their power. This pattern of institutional ambivalence undermines conventional wisdom about congressional party resurgence, the power of oversight, and the return of the so-called imperial presidency. This book examines Congress's ...Read More
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Bluecoats and Tar Heels: Soldiers and Civilians in Reconstruction North Carolina
Though the Civil War ended in April 1865, the conflict between Unionists and Confederates continued. The bitterness and rancor resulting from the collapse of the Confederacy spurred an ongoing cycle of hostility and bloodshed that made the Reconstruction period a violent era of transition. The violence was so pervasive that the federal government deployed units of the U.S. Army in North Carolina and other southern states to maintain law and order and protect blacks and Unionists. This book tells the story of the army's twelve-year occupation of North Carolina, a time of political instability and social unrest. This book details ...Read More
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Becoming King: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Making of a National Leader
Without question, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is the face of the civil rights revolution that reshaped the social and political landscape of the United States. Although many biographers and historians have examined Dr. King's activism, few have recognized the pivotal role that the people of Montgomery, Alabama, played in preparing him for leadership. King arrived in Montgomery as a virtually unknown doctoral student, but his activities there—from organizing the Montgomery bus boycott to building relationships with local activists such as Rufus Lewis, E. D. Nixon, and Virginia Durr—established him as the movement's most visible leader. This book illustrates how ...Read More
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Act of Justice: Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation and the Law of War
In his first inaugural address, Abraham Lincoln declared that as president he would “have no lawful right” to interfere with the institution of slavery. Yet less than two years later, he issued a proclamation intended to free all slaves throughout the Confederate states. When critics challenged the constitutional soundness of the act, Lincoln asserted that he was endowed “with the law of war in time of war”. This book contends Lincoln was no reluctant emancipator; he wrote a truly radical document that treated Confederate slaves as an oppressed people rather than merely as enemy property. In this respect, Lincoln's proclamation ...Read More
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In Defense of the Bush Doctrine
The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, shattered the prevalent optimism in the United States that had blossomed during the tranquil and prosperous 1990s, when democracy seemed triumphant and catastrophic wars were a relic of the past. President George W. Bush responded with a bold and controversial grand strategy for waging a preemptive Global War on Terror, which has ignited passionate debate about the purposes of American power and the nation's proper role in the world. This book offers a vigorous argument for the principles of moral democratic realism that inspired the Bush administration's policy of regime change in Iraq. ...Read More
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Henry Watterson and the New South: The Politics of Empire, Free Trade, and Globalization
Henry Watterson (1840–1921), editor of the Louisville Courier-Journal from the 1860s through World War I, was one of the most important and widely read newspaper editors in American history. An influential New South supporter of sectional reconciliation and economic development, Watterson was also the nation's premier advocate of free trade and globalization. Watterson's vision of a prosperous and independent South within an expanding American empire was unique among prominent Southerners and Democrats. He helped articulate the bipartisan embrace of globalization that accompanied America's rise to unmatched prosperity and world power. This book restores Watterson to his place at the heart ...Read More
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Gerald Ford and the Challenges of the 1970s
History has not been kind to Gerald Ford. His name evokes an image of either America's only unelected president, who abruptly pardoned his corrupt predecessor, or an accident-prone man who failed to provide skilled leadership to a country in domestic turmoil. This book reexamines Ford's two and a half years in office, showing that his presidency successfully confronted the most vexing crises of the postwar era. Surveying the state of America in the 1970s, the book focuses on the economic challenges facing the country. It argues that Ford's understanding of the national economy was better than that of any other ...Read More
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