history

The story of how the women's rights movement began at the Seneca Falls convention of 1848 is a cherished American myth. The standard account credits founders such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Lucretia Mott with defining and then leading the campaign for women's suffrage. In her provocative new history, Lisa Tetrault demonstrates that Stanton, Anthony, and their peers gradually created and popularized this origins story during the second half of the nineteenth century in response to internal movement dynamics as well as the racial politics of memory after the Civil War. The founding mythology that coalesced in their speeches and writings--most notably Stanton and Anthony's "History of Woman Suffrage"--provided younger activists with the vital resource of a usable past for the ongoing struggle, and it helped consolidate Stanton and Anthony's leadership against challenges from the grassroots and rival suffragists.As Tetrault shows, while this mythology has narrowed our understanding of the early efforts to champion women's rights, the myth of Seneca Falls itself became an influential factor in the suffrage movement. And along the way, its authors amassed the first archive of feminism and literally invented the modern discipline of women's history.

As the specter of a second world war grew, so did Bangor's strategic importance in eastern Maine. National Draft Day saw 3,157 local men register to serve, and the city built up its Dow Field as the nation braced for war. Nearly 6,000 servicemen and women called Dow their home base throughout World War II. Organizations like the local Soldiers Welfare Council and the USO welcomed the troops even as women stepped into roles vacated by enlisted men and worked tirelessly to keep up the community's patriotic spirit. Bangor and its world-class air base stood strong at home as its native sons fought valiantly on the warfront.

Magdolna Hargittai uses over fifteen years of in-depth conversation with female physicists, chemists, biomedical researchers, and other scientists to form cohesive ideas on the state of the modern female scientist. The compilation, based on sixty conversations, examines unique challenges that women with serious scientific aspirations face. In addition to addressing challenges and the unjustifiable underrepresentation of women at the higher levels of academia, Hargittai takes a balanced approach by discussing how some of the most successful of these women have managed to obtain professional success and personal happiness. Women Scientists portrays scientists from different backgrounds, different geographical regions-eighteen countries from four continents-and leaders from a variety of professional backgrounds, including eight Nobel laureate women. The book is divided into three sections: "Husband and Wife Teams," "Women at the Top," and "In High Positions." Hargittai uses her own experience to introduce her first section on the lives of prominent scientific couples and addresses the joys and disadvantages of husband and wife teams. The second section is a comprehensive exploration of the struggles and triumphs of "women at the top." Hargittai introduces women from countries where relatively little has been written about female scientists. The final section focuses on women scientists involved with science administration and leadership. Hargittai's biographical sketches role models for budding scientists. The book is a much needed account of female presence and influence in the sciences.

During the 1930s, the United States began to look more favorably on its southern neighbors. Latin America offered expanded markets to an economy crippled by the Great Depression, while threats of war abroad nurtured in many Americans isolationist tendencies and a desire for improved hemispheric relations. One of these Americans was Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the primary author of America's Good Neighbor Policy. In this thought-provoking book, Fredrick Pike takes a wide-ranging look at FDR's motives for pursuing the Good Neighbor Policy, at how he implemented it, and at how its themes have played out up to the mid-1990s. Pike's investigation goes far beyond standard studies of foreign and economic policy. He explores how FDR's personality and Eleanor Roosevelt's social activism made them uniquely simpatico to Latin Americans. He also demonstrates how Latin culture flowed north to influence U.S. literature, film, and opera. The book will be essential reading for everyone interested in hemispheric relations.

Eighteen nurses who served in the United States military nurse corps during the Vietnam War present their personal accounts in this book. They represent all military branches and both genders. They served in the theater of combat, in the United States, and in countries allied with the U.S. They served in front line hospitals, hospital ships, large medical centers and small clinics. They speak of caring for casualties during a conflict filled with controversy--and of patriotism, of the nursing profession and of travel and the adventure of friendship and love.

Four generations of women fought for the right to vote. This book shows how their grand reform effort overcame resistance from traditionalists fearing social decay, religious leaders citing scriptural prohibitions, and a stodgy political establishment reluctant to share power. Shows how women's rights came about not only because suffragists organized;they had been organized for decades to no avail;but also because the concept of womanhood expanded to accommodate a role for women outside the home and church Explains why suffrage came first and most easily in the West, which wanted to attract women settlers and valued their strength and independence, and most reluctantly in the South, where many feared that suffrage would undermine white supremacy Provides a finely nuanced view of sexism within the abolitionist movement and racism within the women's movement Addresses the challenges that early suffragists faced in getting women themselves to think that they deserved the vote.

The idea of revising what is known of the past constitutes an essential procedure in historical scholarship, but revisionists are often hasty and argumentative in their judgments. Such, argues Robert H. Ferrell, has been the case with assessments of the presidency of Harry S. Truman, who was targeted by historians and political scientists in the 1960s and ?70s for numerous failings in both domestic and foreign policy, including launching the cold war?perceptions that persist to the present day.Widely acknowledged as today?s foremost Truman scholar, Ferrell turns the tables on the revisionists in this collection of classic essays. He goes below the surface appearances of history to examine how situations actually developed and how Truman performed sensibly?even courageously?in the face of unforeseen crises.While some revisionists see Truman as consumed by a blind hatred of the Soviet Union and adopting an unrestrainedly militant stance, Ferrell convincingly shows that Truman wished to get along with the Soviets and was often bewildered by their actions. He interprets policies such as the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan, and support for NATO as prudent responses to perceived threats and credits the Truman administration for the ways in which it dealt with unprecedented problems.What emerges most vividly from Ferrell?s essays is a sense of how weak a hand the United States held from 1945 to1950, with its conventional forces depleted by the return of veterans to civil pursuits after the war and with its capacity for delivery of nuclear weapons in a sorry state. He shows that Truman regarded the atomic bomb as a weapon of last resort, not an instrument of policy, and that he took America into a war in Korea for the good of the United States and its allies. Although Truman has been vindicated on many of these issues, there still remains a lingering controversy over the use of atomic weapons in Japan?a decision that Ferrell argues is understandable in light of what Truman faced at the start of his presidency.Ferrell argues that the revisionists who attacked Truman understood neither the times nor the man?one of the most clearheaded, farsighted presidents ever to occupy the Oval Office. Harry S. Truman and the Cold War Revisionists shows us that Truman?s was indeed a remarkable presidency, as it cautions historians against too quickly appraising the very recent past.

The first battle book from Mark Bowden since his #1 New York Times bestseller Black Hawk Down, Hue 1968 is the story of the centerpiece of the Tet Offensive and a turning point in the American War in Vietnam.In the early hours of January 31, 1968, the North Vietnamese launched over one hundred attacks across South Vietnam in what would become known as the Tet Offensive. The lynchpin of Tet was the capture of Hue, Vietnam?s intellectual and cultural capital, by 10,000 National Liberation Front troops who descended from hidden camps and surged across the city of 140,000. Within hours the entire city was in their hands save for two small military outposts. American commanders refused to believe the size and scope of the Front?s presence, ordering small companies of marines against thousands of entrenched enemy troops. After several futile and deadly days, Lieutenant Colonel Ernie Cheatham would finally come up with a strategy to retake the city, block by block and building by building, in some of the most intense urban combat since World War II.With unprecedented access to war archives in the U.S. and Vietnam and interviews with participants from both sides, Bowden narrates each stage of this crucial battle through multiple viewpoints. Played out over 24 days and ultimately costing 10,000 lives, the Battle of Hue was by far the bloodiest of the entire war. When it ended, the American debate was never again about winning, only about how to leave. Hue 1968 is a gripping and moving account of this pivotal moment.

The "extraordinarily informed" account of how US cryptographers broke Japan's Purple cipher to change the course of World War II ( Kirkus Reviews , starred review). Marching Orders tells the story of how the American military's breaking of the Japanese diplomatic Purple codes during World War II led to the defeat of Nazi Germany and hastened the end of the devastating conflict. With unprecedented access to over one million pages of US Army documents and thousands of pages of top-secret messages dispatched to Tokyo from the Japanese embassy in Berlin, author Bruce Lee offers a series of fascinating revelations about pivotal moments in the war. Challenging conventional wisdom, Marching Orders demonstrates how an American invasion of Japan would have resulted in massive casualties for both forces. Lee presents a thrilling day-by-day chronicle of the difficult choices faced by the American military brain trust and how, aware of Japan's adamant refusal to surrender, the United States made the fateful decision to drop nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Hailed as "one of the most important books ever published on World War II" by Robert T. Crowley, an intelligence officer who later became a senior executive at the CIA, Marching Orders unveils the untold stories behind some of the Second World War's most critical events, bringing them to vivid life. With this book, "many of the mysteries that have eluded historians since the end of the war are much clarified: the Pearl Harbor fiasco, D-Day, why the Americans let the Russians capture Berlin, and why the decision to drop the atomic bomb was made. This is the most significant publication about World War II since the recent series of books on the Ultra revelations" ( Library Journal ). It's a story that, as historian Robin W. Winks said, "no one with the slightest interest in World War II or in the origins of the Cold War can afford to ignore.".

This book is open access and available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. It is funded by Knowledge Unlatched. Women's Activism and "Second Wave" Feminism situates late 20th-century feminisms within a global framework of women's activism. Its chapters, written by leading international scholars, demonstrate how issues of heterogeneity, transnationalism, and intersectionality have transformed understandings of historical feminism. It is no longer possible to imagine that feminism has ever fostered an unproblematic sisterhood among women blind to race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, nationality and citizenship status. The chapters in this collection modify the "wave" metaphor in some cases and in others re-periodize it. By studying individual movements, they collectively address several themes that advance our understandings of the history of feminism, such as the rejection of "hegemonic" feminism by marginalized feminist groups, transnational linkages among women's organizations, transnational flows of ideas and transnational migration. By analyzing practical activism, the chapters in this volume produce new ways of theorizing feminism and new historical perspectives about the activist locations from which feminist politics emerged. Including histories of feminisms in the United States, Canada, South Africa, India, France, Russia, Japan, Korea, Poland and Chile, Women's Activism and "Second Wave" Feminism provides a truly global re-appraisal of women's movements in the late 20th century.