Egyptian-born composer Halim El-Dabh has studied with the giants of 20th-centruy musical composition and conducting. Although The Musical World of Halim El-Dabh focuses on his career from his arrival in the U.S. in 1950 to his retirement from the faculty of Kent State University in 1991, his early life in Egypt, its influence on him musically, and his creative life following retirement are also presented.

More than 150 years after the end of the Civil War, West Point engineer and Brevet Brigadier General Orlando M. Poe (1832–1895) remains one of the Union’s most unsung heroes. He served the Union in uniform from day one of the conflict until the Confederate surrender in North Carolina in late April 1865, and he used his unparalleled ability to predict Confederate movements to lead multiple successful campaigns that turned the tide of the war. Accordingly, the roar of battle permeates this collection of 241 highly literate and previously unpublished wartime letters to his wife, Eleanor Brent Poe.

The Finnish American Heritage Association of Ashtabula County was organized in 1995, and one of its first projects was the interviewing and taping of elderly Finnish Americans to obtain historical accounts of early immigrants. These first-person accounts were written as the narrator told them. Many of the first- and second-generation Finns were in their eighties or nineties at the time of their interviews, yet their recollections of times gone by were told with frankness and clarity. Photographs representative of these early years are also included in this volume.

The Gettysburg Campaign and its culminating battle have generated more than their share of analysis and published works. In My Gettys­burg, Civil War scholar and twenty-six-year Gettysburg resident Mark Snell goes beyond the campaign itself to explore the “culture” of the battlefield. In this fascinating collection, Snell provides an intriguing interpretation of some neglected military aspects of the battle, such as a revisionist study of Judson Kilpatrick’s decision to launch “Farnsworth’s Charge” on the southern end of the Confederate line after Pickett’s Charge and the role of Union logisticians in the Northern victory.

First published in 1948, My Greatest Day in Football is a collection of reminiscences and stories from football’s early stars. College football games were the most memorable moments for many of these players and coaches, though some highlight professional and even high school games. Sam “Slingin’ Sammy” Baugh recounts the National League Championship game played at Wrigley Field during his rookie season; Felix A. “Doc” Blanchard, nicknamed “Mr. Inside” for his powerful running attack, describes the triumphant day when Army ended its thirteen-year losing streak to Notre Dame; and Glenn Scobie “Pop” Warner explains why a tough battle against Cal was his greatest day, even though his Stanford team was not victorious. George “the Gipper” Gipp, Knute Rockne, and Paul Brown, who perhaps provides the most surprising game of all, are all included in My Greatest Day in Football.

During the nineteenth century—a time of great technical and cultural change—fashion was a cultivating force in the development of American society, influenced by one’s social status, geographic location, and economic standing. My Likeness Taken is a collection of daguerreotype portraits of men, women, and children taken between 1840 and 1860. Selected from the top collections in the United States, each image is analyzed to clarify datable clothing and fashion components. With subjects from among the best-dressed members of society, these portraits—reproduced in full color—reflect the latest fashion developments, trends, and influences.

Produced shortly before his death in 1911 and long since out of print, Tom L. Johnson’s autobiography provides a rare personal insight into the career and philosophy of one of the most prominent figures of the American Progressive Era. Influenced by the single tax proposals of Henry George, Johnson gave up a prosperous business career to become a reform politician. Elected first to the U.S. House of Representatives, he served as mayor of Cleveland from 1901 to 1909, instituting sweeping reforms. His championship of municipal ownership, professional management of city departments, and broad public involvement in government makes Johnson’s mayoral administration one of the most celebrated in Cleveland’s history, as well as a focal point for scholars studying the Progressive Era.

Based upon extensive multi-archival research, John Dreifort provides clear evidence that France was not as pro-appeasement toward the Japanese as conventionally thought, and that French policymakers frequently had clearer insight into the dangers and opportunities which exited in the Far East than did statesmen of other major Western powers in the area.

Nathaniel Hawthorne and Edgar Allan Poe were masters of mystery and fantasy, but they also engaged real controversies surrounding individual health, health care practice, and biomedical research in nineteenth-century America. During this volatile era, when mesmerists, phrenologists, and other pseudoscientists reigned and “regular” physicians were just beginning to consolidate power, Hawthorne and Poe provided important critiques of experimental and often haphazard systems of care, as well as insights into the evolving understanding of mental and physical pathologies. As writers, they responded to the social, historical, and medical forces of their own time, yet they also addressed themes of bioethics, humanism, and patient-centered care that remain relevant in the twenty-first century.

Mythic Archetypes in Ralph Waldo Emerson explores the American writer’s essays as mythic prose poems, suggesting a new approach to the practical criticism of Emerson’s works. Richard O’Keefe uses the archetypal model—a critical tool seldom employed on American Romantics, yet frequently applied in the study of British Romantic poets such as William Blake—to contemporize methods of examining Emersonian texts.