In the 1830s, as the Trans Appalachian economy began to stir and Europe’s Industrial Revolution reached its peak, concerned Midwesterners saw opportunities and risks. Success of the Erie Canal as a link to East Coast economic markets whetted the appetites of visionaries and entrepreneurs, who saw huge opportunities. Amid this perfect storm of technology, enterprise, finance, location, and timing arose some of the earliest railroads in the Midwest.

To demonstrate how a Union force overpowered Confederate troops in and around Fredericksburg, Erik F. Nelson emphasizes the role of terrain. Previous studies have relied on misleading primary sources that have left the campaign—and the Union’s larger victory—misunderstood. Moreover, the former battlegrounds near Fredericksburg have been altered by new roads and neighborhoods, further complicating study.

Memory has not been kind to the Philippine-American War and the even lesser-known Moro rebellion. Today, few Americans know the details of these conflicts. There are almost no memorials, and the wars remain poorly understood and nearly forgotten.

Forgotten under a Tropical Sun is the first examination of memoirs and autobiographies from officers and enlisted members of the army, navy, and marines during the Spanish, Filipino, and Moro wars that attempts to understand how these struggles are remembered. It is through these stories that the American enterprise in the Philippines is commemorated.

Editor Robert Garth Scott has sifted through what is arguably the largest collection of Civil War-related material to surface in fifty years. From his childhood in Detroit through his cadetship at West Point, his service in the Mexican, Seminole, and Civil Wars, and his post-Civil War experiences in the West, Willcox’s story is published here for the first time.

A master artist and teacher of metalwork presents a bold new approach to creative expression in metal. Believing that the time has come for the artist to free himself from the functional forms that have dominated the metal smith’s craft—the cup, the box, the pitcher, etc.—Heikki Seppa urges the craftsman to create in terms of pure form, and in this book he shows him how. Two Things are essential. The first is a thorough understanding of the special properties of metal as an artistic medium and an intimate knowledge of techniques for working it. Only when he has mastered the physical means of working with metal can the artist free his imagination for unimpeded creation. Though not addressed to the beginner, Seppa discusses the fundamental techniques of planishing, soldering, and hinging—all the basic means by which metal is shaped. The second is to free the artist from thinking in terms of function, since this limits his concepts of what can be created.

The brief history of Fort Laurens is a story of courage mixed with confusion, of bravery and hardship, of a little Valley Forge on the western side of the struggling nation. The long winter in which an ill-equipped handful of men scrounged for food and withstood attack to maintain their outpost in the wilderness is an undeservedly neglected part of the Revolutionary War story and a thrilling beginning to the Ohio story. This book is the first complete account of the episode, drawing on all the documentary evidence available and placing it in the context of the larger struggle for independence.

The San Francisco 49ers are among the most dynamic franchises, not only in the National Football League but in all of professional sports. They have won five Super Bowl titles and have produced some of football’s most dynamic players in Joe Montana, Jerry Rice, and Ronnie Lott, all of whom were coached by Bill Walsh, one of the game’s most innovative thinkers.

“Counterfactual questions, if kept within the parameters of what was possible at the time and place, can often help us better understand events of the past. In so doing, they can sometimes bring about a ‘paradigm shift’—a new way of thinking about history and hence of grasping its meaning… While the events described in the opening sections are fanciful, the underlying points, I believe are valid. The counterfactual events, I hope, can help us see the points with greater clarity.”—From the Preface

Literary historians have been giving increased attention to texts that have hitherto been largely ignored. The works of women, the disenfranchised, and “commoners” have all benefited from such critical analysis. Similarly, letters, memoirs, popular poetry, and serialized fiction have become the subject of scholarly inquiry. Elizabethan fiction has also profited from the newer odes of critical inquiry. This collection of original essays draws on a wide range of critical and theoretical approaches, especially those influenced by various elements of feminism, Marxism, and cultural studies. They illuminate the richness of canonical examples of Elizabethan fiction (Sidney’s Arcadia) and less widely read works (Henry Chettle’s Piers Plainess).

Fraternal Light: On Painting While Black is a lyric evocation of the life and work of the great African American artist Beauford Delaney. These poems pay homage to Delaney’s resilience and ingenuity in the face of profound adversity. Although his work never garnered the acclaim it deserves—but is finally receiving—Delaney was well known and highly respected in African American cultural circles, among bohemian writers and artists based in Greenwich Village from the 1930s to the early 1950s, and in Parisian avant-garde and expatriate enclaves from the mid-1950s to the mid-1970s.