Books Books Books
Ohio State historians have had another impressive year of scholarly publishing
Michael Les Benedict’s The Blessings of Liberty: A Concise History of the Constitution of the United States, second edition (Houghton Mifflin, 2005), covers the development of the Constitution and its application, from English colonial law in the early republic to the application of critical cases in the Supreme Court and local courts up to the present day. John Brooke’s 1989 monograph, The Heart of the Commonwealth: Society and Political Culture in Worcester County, Massachusetts, 1713-1861 was re-issued as an on-demand paperback by Cambridge University Press. This study uses a wide variety of sources to examine the relationships between liberal social thought and the development of political institutions, showing how Worcester County shifted from a republican to a more liberal outlook over time. John Burnham is co-editor of a memoir, William Richard Wilkinson, Prison Work: a Tale of Thirty Years in the California Department of Corrections (Ohio State University Press, 2005). Wilkinson was a California prisons corrections officer for decades, and offers a rare view of prison life from the point of view of a prison administrator and overseer through a series of interviews. William Childs published The Texas Railroad Commission: Understanding Regulation in America to the Mid-Twentieth Century (Texas A & M University Press, 2005). In it he demonstrates the trajectory of relationships between government and industry in the context of the railroads and their regulation. The Commission offers an exemplary case for understanding these relationships in numerous other contexts as well. Samuel Chu co-edited the collection Madame Chiang Kaishek and her China (Signature Books, 2005). Soong Meiling (known to the world as Madame Chiang Kaishek) lived for over a century, spanning and affecting a critical period in Chinese relations with the West. The essays gathered here reflect on her special role in the history of China’s complicated navigation of the twentieth century.
A selection of History Department Books, 2005-06
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Steven Conn’s Metropolitan Philadelphia: Living with the Presence of the Past (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006), argues that Philadelphia’s future is directly tied to its past. Philadelphia has weathered the changes from a utopian center of democratic ideals, to an industrial powerhouse, to a modern post-industrial metropolis, but now the delicate balance between vibrant center and suburban sprawl must be addressed. David Cressy produced two volumes this year. His new monograph, England on Edge: Crisis and Revolution, 1640-1642 (Oxford University Press, 2006), looks at the collapse of the government of Charles I, the disintegration of the Church of England, and the accompanying cultural panic that led to civil war. It examines stresses and fractures in social, political, and religious culture, and the emergence of an unrestrained popular press. He also co-authored Gunpowder Plots: A Celebration of 400 Years of Bonfire Nights (Penguin Books, 2005), a collection of essays on the events, implications, and celebration of Guy Fawkes’ attempt to annihilate the British ruling class and royal family in 1605. Carter Findley and John Rothney produced the sixth edition of Twentieth-Century World (Houghton Mifflin, 2006). This standard world history textbook takes up the themes of global interrelatedness, identity and difference, the rise of mass society, and technology versus nature. It deals with these issues as they manifested themselves in political, economic, social, scientific, artistic, and military history. Carter Findley published a Turkish translation of his book Turks in World History (Kitap Yayınevi, 2006), the first single-volume overview of the Turkic peoples’ development over the last 2,000 years. Through cultural, social, political, and economic perspectives, it traces their shifting fortunes as nomads, conquerors, masters of an empire, and citizens of a modern nation-state. Mark Grimsley co-authored Shiloh: A Battlefield Guide (University of Nebraska Press, 2006), which takes the reader step-by-step through the historical geography of the critical Civil War battle site. The authors use narrative, analysis, and vignettes to bring this historical moment alive for both the reader at home and the battlefield visitor.
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Peter Hahn published Crisis and Crossfire: The United States and the Middle East Since 1945 (Potomac Books, 2005). In it he shows why America became far more interested in the Middle East after the Second World War, and what the results have been of our projection of power into the region. The author addresses such timely issues as the reasons for various policy decisions, the impact of the Cold War and Muslim nationalist movements, and United States decisions concerning the Arab-Israeli conflict. Barbara Hanawalt co-authored a ninth edition of The Western Experience (McGraw Hill, 2007), one of the most widely used Western civilization textbooks in the country. It features analytical views of events, along with discussions of art and science, to complement the larger discussion of culture, politics, society, and religion. The essay style is designed to teach students about historical writing and thinking, and many primary documents are included together with the web resources. Jane Hathaway published Beshir Agha: Chief Eunuch of the Ottoman Imperial Harem, in the series Makers of the Muslim World, ed. Patricia Crone (Oneworld Publications, 2006). This monograph describes the activities and legacy of el-Hajj Beshir Agha (ca. 1657-1746), an Ethiopian slave who rose to become the Chief Eunuch of the Ottoman Imperial Harem at the beginning of the eighteenth century. She emphasizes Beshir’s broad influence in all spheres, including the education of royal children, the appointment of viziers, and the establishment of many libraries, all of which he used to promote the Hanafi legal rite in the Empire. Thomas Ingersoll published To Intermix with Our White Brothers: Indian Mixed Bloods in the United States from the Earliest Times to the Indian Removals (The University of New Mexico Press, 2005). Here he makes the case that unions between American Indians and whites of European origin were so common by the period of the early Republic that they were perceived in popular prejudice as a racial, social, and political threat in the Jacksonian era. This, he argues, is the background necessary to understand the Indian removals of the nineteenth century.
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Williamson Murray co-edited The Past as Prologue: The Importance of History to the Military Profession (Cambridge University Press, 2006). This collection of essays makes the case that current military strategists should study the past to learn about the patterns of military conflict and the effectiveness of various solutions already attempted. It includes a section of case studies illustrating such repetitive patterns. Allan Millett published The War for Korea, 1945-1950: A House Burning (University of Kansas Press, 2005), the first of his two-volume history of the Korean War. Here he discusses the origins of the Korea conflict in the Japanese occupation (1910-1945), which fed into a clash between Marxist-Leninist and Nationalist-Capitalist interests for control of the country after World War II. Geoffrey Parker published two books this year. First is a fourth edition of The Times Compact History of the World (Times Books, 2005), which uses an integrated system of maps, illustrations, and narrative text to describe the central events of civilization from the emergence of modern human beings to the turn of the second millennium—-all in one small volume. He also edited The Cambridge History of Warfare (Cambridge University Press, 2005), which brings together the expertise of seven scholars to describe wars, weapons, battles, armies, strategies, and related topics over the course of Western history. The volume stresses the impact of contextual elements, especially social and economic forces, on the history of military conflict. Christopher Phelps published a paperback edition of his 1997 book Young Sidney Hook: Marxist and Pragmatist (University of Michigan Press, 2005). He argues that Hook never became a dogmatic Marxist, but rather tempered Marxist ideology with pragmatic naturalism to understand why socialism had failed in Europe, and how new variations on the experiment might succeed in America. ■
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