A president defying Congress. Disrespect for the law. Attacks on the press. Evasion in the courts. The privatization of war. Quid pro quos with foreign nations. The mounting dangers to American democracy have long been with us. But all these perils first emerged together during the Iran-Contra scandal of the Reagan-Bush era. This opaque foreign ......
Slavery and the Making of Mass Incarceration in New Orleans, 1803-1930
Americans often assume that slave societies had little use for prisons and police because slaveholders only ever inflicted violence directly or through overseers. Mustering tens of thousands of previously overlooked arrest and prison records, John Bardes demonstrates the opposite: in parts of the South, enslaved and free people were jailed at ......
Slavery and the Making of Mass Incarceration in New Orleans, 1803-1930
Americans often assume that slave societies had little use for prisons and police because slaveholders only ever inflicted violence directly or through overseers. Mustering tens of thousands of previously overlooked arrest and prison records, John Bardes demonstrates the opposite: in parts of the South, enslaved and free people were jailed at ......
Rural America is at a crossroads: either it will manage to sustain itself long-term, or-as current trends suggest-it will continue to disappear through depopulation and urbanization. There have been calls for economic redevelopment, but even with these proposals, J. Tom Mueller argues that policymakers, politicians, and academics rarely make a ......
Rural America is at a crossroads: either it will manage to sustain itself long-term, or-as current trends suggest-it will continue to disappear through depopulation and urbanization. There have been calls for economic redevelopment, but even with these proposals, J. Tom Mueller argues that policymakers, politicians, and academics rarely make a ......
The Civil War was a major turning point in American religious thought, argues Mark A. Noll. Although Christian believers agreed with one another that the Bible was authoritative and that it should be interpreted through commonsense principles, there was rampant disagreement about what Scripture taught about slavery. Furthermore, most Americans ......
The Constitutional Convention of 1787 brings to life the debates that most profoundly shaped American government. As representatives to the convention, students must investigate the ideological arguments behind possible structures for a new government and create a new constitution.
The Crisis of Catiline situates students in Rome in 63 BCE during a time of urban and rural tumult, economic instability, sensational trials, and electoral misconduct. Lucius Sergius Catilina (or "Catiline"), a charismatic and scandal-plagued noble, has proposed radical reforms that are favored by the urban and rural poor. But he is despised and ......
Drug Trafficking, Smuggling, and Gambling in Cuba from the 1920s to theRevolution
A comprehensive history of crime and corruption in Cuba, The Cuban Connection challenges the common view that widespread poverty and geographic proximity to the United States were the prime reasons for soaring rates of drug trafficking, smuggling, gambling, and prostitution in the tumultuous decades preceding the Cuban revolution. Eduardo Saenz ......
