A central figure in Reconstruction-era politics, Adelbert Ames and his contributions during a significant and uncertain time in American history are the focus of Michael J. Megelsh’s fascinating study. As Megelsh discusses, Ames’s life took many compelling turns. Born on Maine’s rocky shore in 1835, he served as a Union general during the American Civil War and was heralded as one of the young stars whose leadership was integral in helping the Union to victory. He briefly remained in the army after the conflict, stationed in Mississippi, where he entered the political arena.

In this first full-length study of Lynd’s activist career, author Carl Mirra charts the development of the New Left and traces Lynd’s journey into the southern civil rights and anti–Vietnam War movements during the 1960s. He details Lynd’s service as a coordinator of the Mississippi Freedom Schools, his famous and controversial peace mission to Hanoi with Tom Hayden, his turbulent academic career, and the legendary attempt by the Radical Historians’ Caucus within the American Historical Association to elect him AHA president. The book concludes with Lynd’s move in the 1970s to Niles, Ohio, where he assisted in the struggle to keep the steel mills open and where he works as a labor lawyer today.

Intrigue, deception, bribery, poison, murder—all play a central role in the story of Minnie Walkup, a young woman from New Orleans who began her life of crime when she was only sixteen years old

“Johnson (1837-88) lived in northern India with her husband, a Presbyterian missionary, from 1860 to 1883. As the title to this work implies, her letters to family members in Pennsylvania express the tender affection and care of a loving daughter and sister. A homemaker, Johnson comments on India’s weather, the bumps and bruises of her children, and the work of her husband. With the onset of the American Civil War, her letters grow tense, reflecting her deep concern for her brothers in the Union Army…Editor Tull’s introduction, chapter summaries, and occasional notes unobtrusively clarify the work, a body of correspondence possessing a quality of warmth and love.” —Library Journal

When Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, he also authorized the U.S. Army to recruit black soldiers for the war effort. Nearly 200,000 men answered the call, and several thousand of them came from Canada. What compelled these men to leave the relative comfort and safety of home to fight in a foreign war? In African Canadians in Union Blue, Richard M. Reid sets out in search of an answer and discovers a group of men whose courage and contributions open a window on the changing understanding of the American Civil War and the ties that held black communities together even as the borders around them shifted and were torn asunder.

With the fighting in World War II over in mid-August 1945, more than one-half million American troops moved to occupy Japan. Much of the country was ruined, buried under the rubble and debris of saturation bombing and the atomic blasts over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japan’s rulers were stunned by defeat, and its people resigned to whatever the victors might impose upon them. Aftermath of War described the American transformation of Occupied Japan to be the greatest success story of United States policy in Asian. Howard Schonberger argues that this success came at a high price. Many of the popularity supported democratic reforms promoted by Americans in the early years of the Occupation were scuttled. Asian peoples developed a fear of the new Japan as a junior partner of the United States in opposing their legitimate revolutionary aspirations. Finally Japanese exports have triggered a dangerous xenophobic reaction in the United States in recent years. Schonberger recounts the rise of the new Japan through the eyes of eight Americans centrally engaged in events of the Occupation. Aftermath of War provides insights into the recent conflicts between the U.S. and Japan and recaptures the ideological debate within the United States over the future course of Japan. It implicitly suggests that Americans and Japanese seriously reconsider the post-surrender reform agenda rejected by official American policy after 1947.

“What continues to affect me in Robert Miltner’s Against the Simple is the silence that haunts the edges of experience and meaning. Like the lonely streetscapes of Giorgia De Chirico, Miltner’s poems, often cast in brief sentences surrounded by an eerie quiet, haunt us with the unseen and the unheard which seem to lurk just around the corners of language and consciousness. Often his images ‘tease us out of thought.’ In poems like ‘Eating Alone’ the uncanny strangeness is almost hallucinatory. ‘How true is the algebra of emptiness?’ House Noises at Night asks. These dreamingly attentive, watching and listening poems are kind of answer.” –Richard Hague

This collection of personal and autobiographical poems is written by Helga Sandburg, daughter of the poet, Carl Sandburg. It contains a quartet of poems written after the death of her husband, as well as work inspired by the themes of motherhood, music, nature, and travel.

Using these overlooked and sensational magazines, David M. Earle explores the popular image of Ernest Hemingway in order to consider the dynamics of both literary celebrity and midcentury masculinity. Profusely illustrated with magazine covers, article blurbs, and advertisements in full color, All Man! considers the role that visuality played in the construction of Hemingway’s reputation, as well as conveys a lurid and largely overlooked genre of popular publishing. More than just a contribution to Hemingway studies, All Man! is an important addition to scholarship in the modernist era in American literature, gender studies, popular culture, and the history of publishing.

Through colorful, personal vignettes, landscape designer Valerie Strong presents and solves specific landscape problems, including the excavations of her own ponds and the creation of three award-winning gardens. She comments on her natural surroundings, even empty lots and roadsides. Strong examines the neglected infrastructure of landscape design—the growers, carpenters, stone masons, landscapers, and labor force—with sympathy and humor, lifting the paper plans to philosophical observations of gardening and life. All My Phlox will direct the novice gardener and confirm the habits of those who are committed to working with nature. The author passes on her message of how to be a good steward of the land.