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A New History of Kentucky
The first comprehensive history of the state since the publication of Thomas D. Clark's landmark History of Kentucky over sixty years ago. A New History of Kentucky brings the Commonwealth to life, from Pikeville to the Purchase, from Covington to Corbin, this account reveals Kentucky's many faces and deep traditions.
Lowell Harrison, professor emeritus of history at Western Kentucky University, is the author of many books, including George Rogers Clark and the War in the West, The Civil War in Kentucky, Kentucky's Road to Statehood , Lincoln of Kentucky, and Kentucky's Governors.
James C. Klotter, the state historian of Kentucky ...Read More
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Jefferson's Declaration of Independence: Origins, Philosophy, and Theology
Allen Jayne analyzes the ideology of the Declaration of Independence—and its implications—by going back to the sources of Jefferson's ideas: Bolingbroke, Kames, Reid, and Locke. He concludes that the Declaration must be read as an attack on two claims of absolute authority: that of government over its subjects and of religion over the minds of men. Today's world is more secular than Jefferson's, and the importance of philosophical theology in eighteenth-century critical thought must be recognized in order to understand fully and completely the Declaration's implications. Jayne addresses this need by putting religion back into the discussion.
A clear, concise, ...Read More
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The Peace Corps Experience: Challenge and Change, 1969-1976
For more than 35 years, the Peace Corps has pursued John F. Kennedy's vision of helping people of the Third World build a better life. Yet with the exception of a few celebrations of its early years, little effort has been made to document that organization's history. Now a former deputy director of the Peace Corps offers a first-hand look at life in the agency—both in the field and at headquarters—and a radical reinterpretation of its history during the Nixon and Ford administrations.
By the end of the 1960s, the Peace Corps was in disarray. Debate raged over its effectiveness, ...Read More
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Heroes and Horses: Tales of the Bluegrass
War hero. Lawyer. U.S. Senate candidate. Horse lover. Farm boy. Fundraiser. To this impressive list add one more role ably filled by Philip Ardery: master storyteller.
Heroes and Horses presents a series of delightful vignettes evoking a way of life almost beyond recall. Bourbon County, the touchstone for Ardery’s life, is the center that holds together the tales in the collection. Stories about Ardery’s family home, “Rocclicgan,” boyhood activities on the farm, and the servants’ kitchen gossip paint vivid portraits of a lost time in Kentucky’s history.
Though the Ardery family and most of their neighbors were not horse people, ...Read More
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Jonathan Belcher: Colonial Governor
As early as the eighteenth century, New England's ministers were decrying public morality. Evangelical leaders such as Jonathan Edwards called for rulers to become spiritual as well as political leaders who would renew the people's covenant with God. The prosperous merchant Jonathan Belcher (1682-1757) self-consciously strove to become such a leader, an American Nehemiah. As governor of three royal colonies and early patron of the College of New Jersey (later Princeton University), Belcher became an important but controversial figure in colonial America.
In this first biography of the colonial governor, Michael C. Batinski depicts a man unusually riddled with contradictions. ...Read More
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Detroit And The "Good War": The World War II Letters of Mayor Edward Jeffries and Friends
Edward J. Jeffries Jr., was elected mayor of Detroit in 1937 and for a decade led the city through a period of race riots, union turmoil, and unprecedented growth. Jeffries’s circle of friends was made up primarily of newspaper reporters who shared his interests and lifestyle. Devoted to family, they nevertheless worked long hours, smoked heavily, drank moderately, and gambled often in their running card games of gin and poker.
After Pearl Harbor, Jeffries watched his closest friends, most twelve to fourteen years his junior, enlist in the armed forces. Voracious letter writers, over the next four years they shared ...Read More
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Religion and Politics in the Early Republic: Jasper Adams and the Church-State Debate
The church-state debate currently alive in our courts and legislatures is strikingly similar to that of the 1830s. A secular drift in American culture and the role of religion in a pluralistic society were concerns that dominated the controversy then, as now. In Religion and Politics in the Early Republic, Daniel L. Dreisbach compellingly argues that the issues in our current debate were framed in earlier centuries by documents crucial to an understanding of church-state relations, the First Amendment, and our present concern with the constitutional role of religion in American public life. Reflection on this national discussion of more ...Read More
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The WPA Guide to Kentucky
One of the first great reference tools on the Commonwealth, this WPA Guide is an important, vital part of our heritage. While it includes brief essays describing Kentucky's history, folklore, education, industry, geology, ethnic mix and other topics, the most remarkable feature is the driving tours that are as accurate today as they were more than half a century ago. Careful annotations give directions, point out historical and tourist sites, describe the country side, and even provide mileage for the drives.
F. Kevin Simon teaches history at the Sayre School in Lexington. From 1990-1992 he directed educational programs at the ...Read More
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The Americanization of West Virginia: Creating a Modern Industrial State, 1916-1925
Local teachers and ministers extolling the virtues of hard work and loyalty to God and country. Veterans' groups and women's clubs promoting the military fighting radicalism, and equating business and patriotism. Industrial leaders gaining legal as well as moral influence over national domestic policy. Such scenes might seem to be lifted from a Sinclair Lewis novel or a Contract with America publicity video. But as John C. Hennen shows in this piercing analysis of early-twentieth-century American political culture, from 1916 to 1925 "Americanization" became the theme—indeed, the script—not only of West Virginia but of the entire nation.
Hennen's interdisciplinary work ...Read More
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South Pacific Diary, 1942-1943
A unique chronicle of the war from the perspective of a sensitive twenty-four-year-old sergeant who wrote for the Army’s in-house paper, Yank, the Army Weekly and a tale of the South Pacific that will not soon be forgotten. Correspondent Mack Morriss reluctantly left his diary in the Honolulu Yank office in July 1943. “Here is contained an account of the past eight and one-half months,” he wrote in his last entry, “a period which I shall never forget.” The next morning he was on a plane headed back to the South Pacific and the New Georgia battleground.
Morriss was working ...Read More
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