Old Is Gold

This account of the life of Benjamin Bugsy Siegel follows his beginnings in the Lower East Side of New York to his role in the development of the famous Flamingo Hotel and Casino. Larry D. Gragg examines Siegel's image as portrayed in popular culture,...

Much has been written about the causes for the outbreak of World War I and the ways in which the war was fought, but few historians have tackled the reasons why the Germans, who appeared on the surface to be winning for most of...

In 1832, 57 Irish Catholic workers were brought to the United States to lay one of the most difficult miles of American railway, Duffy's Cut of the Pennsylvania Railroad. These men were chosen because, in the eyes of the railroad company that hired them,...

Exhibiting the full range of the Manuscripts and Rare Books Department of the Hispanic Society of America, Treasures from the Hispanic Society Library, which accompanied the eponymous Grolier Club exhibition, relates the history of Spain and the spread of its language and culture to...

The fascinating story of the so-called "Prayer Book Rebellion" of 1549 which saw the people of Devon and Cornwall rise up against the Crown The Western Rising of 1549 was the most catastrophic event to occur in Devon and Cornwall between the Black Death...

Published in Cooperation with the William P. Clements Center for Southwest Studies, Southern Methodist University. In the late nineteenth century, at a time when Americans were becoming more removed from nature than ever before, U.S. soldiers were uniquely positioned to understand and construct nature's...

When ungroovy scientists did groovy science: how non-activist scientists and engineers adapted their work to a rapidly changing social and political landscape. In The Squares, Cyrus Mody shows how, between the late 1960s and the early 1980s, some scientists and engineers who did not...

One hardly known but fascinating aspect of the Cold War was the use of the holy Virgin Mary as a warrior against atheist ideologies. After the Second World War, there was a remarkable rise in the West of religiously inflected rhetoric against what was...

At a time when the word "socialist" is but one of numerous political epithets that are generally divorced from the historical context of America's political history, The Socialist Party of America presents a new, mature understanding of America's most important minor political party of...

In early twentieth-century China, Chen Diexian (1879-1940) was a maverick entrepreneur--at once a prolific man of letters and captain of industry, a magazine editor and cosmetics magnate. He tinkered with chemistry in his private studio, used local cuttlefish to source magnesium carbonate, and published...

At the center of American history is a hole--a gap where some scholars' indifference or disdain has too long stood in for the true story of the American Midwest. A first-ever chronicle of the Midwest's formative century, The Good Country restores this American heartland...

The Imjin War (1592-1598) was a grueling conflict that wreaked havoc on the towns and villages of the Korean Peninsula. The involvement of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean forces, not to mention the regional scope of the war, was the largest the world had seen,...

How succession in authoritarian regimes was less a competition of visions for the future and more a settling of scores "Joseph Torigian's stellar research and personal interviews have produced a brilliant, meticulous study. It fundamentally undermines what political scientists have presumed to be the...

In the late nineteenth century a resurgent Jacobite movement emerged in Britain and the United States, highlighting the virtues of the Stuart monarchs in contrast to liberal, democratic, and materialist Victorian Britain and Gilded Age America. Compared with similarly aligned protest movements of the...

Twenty-first century Americans routinely use the 1960s as a metaphor, a sort of convenient shorthand, for the cultural wars--that continuous clash over differing values, beliefs, attitudes, and lifestyles--still bitterly polarizing the nation. Therefore, understanding the 1960s cultural revolution is critical to understanding ourselves. What...

Creek Internationalism in an Age of Revolution, 1763-1818 examines how Creek communities and their leaders remained viable geopolitical actors in the trans-Appalachian West well after the American Revolution. The Creeks pursued aggressive and far-reaching diplomacy between 1763 and 1818 to assert their territorial and...

Ongoing controversies about school curricula, such as the teaching of Critical Race Theory and the role of parents in public education, can all be traced to the Scopes Trial. Today, the question remains: who controls the school curriculum? This was a foundational issue in...

The complex political and cultural relationship between the German state and the Ottoman Empire is explored through the lens of the Ottoman Railway network, its architecture, and material culture With lines extending from Bosnia to Baghdad to Medina, the Ottoman Railway Network (1868-1919) was...

In this groundbreaking study, historian Michael J. Alarid examines New Mexico's transition from Spanish to Mexican to US control during the nineteenth century and illuminates how emerging class differences played a crucial role in the regime change. After Mexico won independence from Spain in...

Stories of transnational terror and justice illuminate the past and present of South America's struggles for human rights Through the voices of survivors and witnesses, human rights activists, judicial actors, journalists, and historians, Francesca Lessa unravels the secrets of transnational repression masterminded by South...