African Americans on the Overland Trails, 1841-1869
The westward migration of nearly half a million Americans in the mid-nineteenth century looms large in U.S. history. Classic images of rugged Euro-Americans traversing the plains in their prairie schooners still stir the popular imagination. But this traditional narrative, no matter how alluring, falls short of the actual-and far more ......
Housing Washington's Army during the American Revolution
George Washington and his Continental Army braving the frigid winter at Valley Forge form an iconic image in the popular history of the American Revolution. Such winter camps, Steven Elliott tells us in Surviving the Winters, were also a critical factor in the waging and winning of the War of Independence. Exploring the inner workings of the ......
Pedro de Alvarado and the Conquest of Guatemala, 1520-1541
The conquest of Guatemala was brutal, prolonged and complex, fraught with intrigue and deception, and not at all clear-cut. Yet views persist of it as an armed confrontation whose stakes were evident and whose outcomes were decisive, especially in favor of the Spaniards. A critical reappraisal is long overdue, one that calls for us to reconsider ......
The Reputation and History of Birmingham, San Francisco, and Las Vegas
Growing up in Birmingham, Alabama, a city that he loved, Jonathan Foster was forced to come to grips with its reputation for racial violence. In so doing, he began to question how other cities dealt with similar kinds of stigmas that resulted from behavior and events that fell outside accepted norms. He wanted to know how such stigmas changed over ......
Imagine a time when a killer disease took lives at a rate rivaling Covid-19 in 2020 and 2021, and continued that grim harvest year after year, decade after decade. Such a nightmare scenario played out in the state of Arkansas-and across the United States-throughout the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth, when the scourge of ......
Imagine a time when a killer disease took lives at a rate rivaling Covid-19 in 2020 and 2021, and continued that grim harvest year after year, decade after decade. Such a nightmare scenario played out in the state of Arkansas-and across the United States-throughout the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth, when the scourge of ......
British and American commanders first used modern special forces in support of conventional military operations during World War II. Since then, although special ops have featured prominently in popular culture and media coverage of wars, the academic study of irregular warfare has remained as elusive as the practitioners of special operations ......
Days before the armistice was signed ending World War I, Stratton D. Brooks, third president of the University of Oklahoma, sent a letter to every student, former student, and faculty member serving in the armed forces. He had a request: would each man write a letter in reply, describing his experiences and impressions during his wartime service? ......
Since the early 1800s, the violent exploits of "El Indio" Rafael through the settlements of northern New Spain have become the stuff of myth and legend. For some, the fabled Apache was a hero, an indigenous Robin Hood who fought oppressive Spaniards to help the dispossessed and downtrodden. For others, he was little more than a merciless killer. ......
