“As a single volume this work is overwhelmingly impressive. Its meticulous scholarship and its intellectual breadth are stunning. Chase’s importance, his quotability, his human social outlook, his many perceptive comments, and all the editors’ notes make this work a highly desirable volume for 19th-century historians. Of all the publications of presidents’ and politicans’ papers, volume I of the Chase Papers is in a class by itself and is the most useful first volume of any similar collection.”—The North Carolina Historical Review

A Man of Distinction among Them represents an important step in under standing the complexities surrounding the early history of the Ohio Country and the Old Northwest and provides the clearest and most comprehensive portrait of a central figure in that history: Alexander McKee. Fathered by a white trader and raised partly by his Shawnee mother, McKee was at home in either culture and played an active role in Great Lakes Indian affairs for nearly 50 years.

In The Heroic Earth, David T. Murphy argues that geopolitical ideas were most dynamic and significant in Germany not during the Nazi era (1933-45) but in the democratic culture of the Weimar republic (1919-33). By helping to condition the German population to geopolitical ideas, which emphasized revision of the Versailles settlement and enlarging Germany’s living space, geopolitics helped contribute to Nazi imperialism. From the defeat of Germany in 1918 until the rise of National Socialism i9n 1933, theories of geographical determinism enjoyed a broad currency in many fields of German public life. The ancient notion that environmental factors—climate, topography, resource distribution—shape society in significant ways was now applied in a radically determinist fashion to help Germans understand why they had lost the war and what they had to do to regain their place among the Great Powers.

“Professor Morrison, a former army officer and member of the faculty at West Point, began this study…with the goal to describe and evaluate not only the curriculum and administration but also the social, military and bureaucratic aspects of the school. With impeccable research and a graceful writing style, he succeeded in his miss.”—Civil War History

Jacob Jennings Brown may well be the most successful—yet forgotten—general of his time. Born into a Pennsylvania Quaker family on the eve of the American Revolution, Brown worked as a Quaker schoolteacher and surveyor and was a pioneer settler of northern New York before serving in the U.S. Army during the War of 1812, eventually rising to the highest command. Early in the war he commanded the militia defending 200 miles of the New York—Canadian border. His successful defense of the Lake Ontario naval base at Sackets Harbor in 1813 was rewarded with a regular army commission as brigadier general. He won more battles against British regular troops than any general in American history, and he was respected by his superiors, his subordinates, and the enemy.

German leaders believed that in the event of a war among European powers, they could organize and exploit a unified Islam. In addition to providing military assistance to the Ottomans, they collaborated with the Turks in appealing to pan-Islamism to stoke the fire of native Muslim revolts against the British in Egypt and India, and they inflamed anti-British passions in the Turkish provinces of Arabia and Mesopotamia and in Libya, Abyssinia, Persia, and Afghanistan. Key British leaders panicked after defeats at Gallipoli and in Mesopotamia, They feared pan-Islamism and a “holy war” directed against Britain’s control of Muslim lands and its rule in India. At the war’s end, Britain and France purposely destroyed the Turkish Empire and divided its former lands among themselves and the Arabs.

The evolution of our institutions of learning, from one-room schoolhouses to the modern educational campuses of today, reflects both the growth of our populace and our shared cultures and traditions. Ohio offers an excellent perspective for viewing and interpreting educational architecture. The heritage of its pioneer settlers, the diversity of its immigrants, and its strategic geographic position for westward migration created a history typical of much of America. The state’s educational buildings reflect this rich history and culture.

This collection of correspondence, many letters previously unpublished, stresses familial relationships, the daughters’ education, and the role of women in nineteenth-century America. “Spur Up Your Pegasus” provides important insights into the personal lives and private thoughts of a prominent political family.

OSS Against the Reich presents the previously unpublished World War II diaries of Colonel David K.E. Bruce, London branch chief of America’s first secret intelligence agency, as he observed the war against Hitler. The entries include eyewitness accounts of D-Day, the rocket attacks on England, and the liberation of Paris. As a top deputy of William J. “Wild Bill” Donovan, founder of the Office of Strategic Services, Bruce kept his diary sporadically in 1942 and made daily entries from the invasion of Normandy until the Battle of the Bulge. Bruce had served in World War I and, as Andrew Mellon’s son-in-law, moved easily in the world of corporate and museum boardrooms and New York society. However, World War II gave him a more serious and satisfying purpose in life; the experience of running the OSS’s most important overseas branch confirmed his lifelong interest in foreign service. After the war, in partnership with his second wife, Evangeline, Bruce headed the Marshall Plan in France and was ambassador to Paris, Bonn, and London. He further served as head of negotiations at the Paris peace talks on Vietnam, first American emissary to China and ambassador to NATO.

Employing previously unexamined archival evidence, Kyvig calls attention to a little-known but broad-based bipartisan movement led by the Associated Against the Prohibition Amendment and the Women’s Organization for National Prohibition Reform. These organizations ad their allies amassed political power, particularly within the Democratic path. In the midst of the Great Depression they engineered a complicated, yet very democratic process of formal constitutional change, in the end achieving the only amendment reversal in U.S. constitutional history.