Even among iconic frontiersmen like John C. FrEmont, Kit Carson, and Jedediah Smith, Jim Bridger stands out. A mountain man of the American West, straddling the fur trade era and the age of exploration, he lived the life legends are made of. His adventures are fit for remaking into the tall tales Bridger himself liked to tell. Here, in a biography ......
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 Mayas believed the four gods, the Bacabs, held up the sky. The Bacabs were also invoked to heal disease. Ritual of the Bacabs: A Book of Maya Incantations is the first English translation of this Maya manuscript, dating back to colonial times. Discovered in the early twentieth century, the manuscript's origins are traced to the golden ......
The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989 freed the world of the political and military perils and imperatives of the Cold War. But it also introduced a whole new constellation of risks and challenges, as Jonathan M. House brings into sharp relief in A Military History of the New World Disorder, 1989-2022, the third and final volume in his ......
The 10th Mountain Division and the Rise of Mountain Warfare
Mountains, Carl von Clausewitz said, introduce a “retarding element” into warfare. To fight in mountains, armies must overcome this challenge via survival strategies and mobility. But the techniques and technologies for doing so are best found in civilian skiing and mountaineering communities, a situation almost unique to mountain ......
For many Latin students, the second year of study marks an exciting turning point. Having learned the basics of grammar and vocabulary, they are finally ready to encounter "real" Latin authors, usually Caesar or Cicero, for the first time. Yet these same students often grow frustrated when they realize their grasp of Latin grammar is not as solid ......
History, Myth, and Violence in the Video Game West
While the Western was dying a slow death across the cultural landscape, it was blazing back to life as a video game in the early twenty-first century. Rockstar Games' Red Dead franchise, beginning with Red Dead Revolver in 2004, has grown into one of the most critically acclaimed video game franchises of the twenty-first century. Red Dead ......
Lincolnshire, 1537. Amid England's religious turmoil, fifteen-year-old Anne Askew is forced to take her dead sister's place in an arranged marriage. The witty, well-educated gentleman's daughter is determined to free herself from her abusive husband, harsh in-laws, and the cruel strictures of her married life. But this is the England of Henry ......
Euripides' Alcestis - perhaps the most anthologized Attic drama--is an ideal text for students reading their first play in the original Greek. Literary commentaries and language aids in most editions are too advanced or too elementary for intermediate students of the language, but in their new student edition, C. A. E. Luschnig and H. M. Roisman ......
