From the depths of German and American archives comes a story one soldier never wanted told. The first volunteer killed defending Robert E. Lee’s position in battle was really a German assassin. After fleeing to the United States to escape prosecution for murder, the assassin enlisted in a German company of the Pennsylvania Volunteers in the Mexican-American War and died defending Lee’s battery at the Siege of Veracruz in 1847. Lee wrote a letter home, praising this unnamed fallen volunteer defender. Military records identify him, but none of the Americans knew about his past life of crime.

The letters of Charles and Bessie Ewing provide eyewitness accounts of the social upheaval and warfare that shook turn-of-the-century China. In addition to discussing their missionary activities in the villages of North China and their struggle to master the Chinese Mandarin dialect, the Ewings describe the impact of Western culture upon the social structure of Imperial China as they lived it. Ruoff sets the larger scene about which the Ewings wrote: The Sino-Japanese war, the extraterritorial treaties, the Boxer Uprising , the foreign military interventions, the belated effort to modernize by the Manchu dynasty, the struggle against opium addiction, the student political movement, and the beginning of the Chinese Revolution. We also learn about the last great empress of China, Tzu His, and the last emperor, the child Pu Yi. Through the Ewing correspondence and his own narrative, Ruoff shows the parallel between the attitude toward the Chinese held by the foreign community in the 1890s and the equally restricted outlook the Chinese held of their land and themselves. But just as the views held by the young Congregationalist minister Ewing change during his nearly two decades of service in China, so also the views of the Chinese themselves undergo vast changes. This book then is both a compelling history of a period in modern China and the story of an American family living that history.

Compiled from papers delivered at the third annual Kent State University Symposium on Democracy held in spring 2002, Democracy and Religion: Free Exercise and Diverse Visions explores the interrelations of politics and religion. The work is divided into four main sections: the constitutional debate regarding the establishment and free exercise of religion clause, the themes of violence and nonviolence as they relate to religion, the free exercise of religion and the rise of fundamentalism, and the challenges to the free exercise of diverse religious practices in a democratic society.

In 1865, after four tumultuous years of fighting, Americans welcomed the opportunity to return to a life of normalcy. President Abraham Lincoln issued his emancipation decree in January 1863 and had set the stage for what he hoped would be a smooth transition from war to peace with the announcement of his reconstruction program in December 1863 and with his call of “malice toward none and charity for all” in his Second Inaugural Address in March 1865. Lincoln’s dream of completing the process of reconstructing the nation was cut short just one month later by the hand of an assassin.

The essays in this volume explore the complex relationships among events, memory, and portrayal of those events and the deepest questions of human experience, all viewed through a range of disciplinary lenses but grouped into three sections, each with its own focus and meaning.

Historical patterns suggest that democratic governments, which often fight wars against authoritarian regimes, maintain peaceful relationships with other governments that uphold political freedoms and empower their civil societies—a concept known as “democratic peace.” Democratic Peace in Theory and Practice is a timely collection of essays by leading scholars that examines how democracies maintain relationships and how democracies are spread throughout the world.

In 1822, Denmark Vesey was found guilty of plotting an insurrection—what would have been the biggest slave uprising in U.S. history. In Denmark Vesey’s Revolt, John Lofton draws upon primary sources to examine the trial and provide, as Peter Hoffer says in his new introduction, “one of the most sensible and measured” accounts of the subject. This classic book was originally published in 1964 as Insurrection in South Carolina: The Turbulent World of Denmark Vesey, and then reissued by the Kent State University Press in 1983 as Denmark Vesey’s Revolt: The Slave Plot That Lit a Fuse to Fort Sumter.

Pinkerton travels to Atkinson, Mississippi, to investigate the murder of bank teller George Gordon and the theft of more than $130,000 in the City Bank of Atkinson. Atkinson appears at first to be no more than a quiet town of shopkeepers, laborers, and businessmen. But dark secrets lurk beneath the town’s Southern facade, and Pinkerton wastes no time in discovering them. Traveling under the guise of a cotton speculator, Pinkerton makes inquiries into the crime without drawing suspicion.

“These nineteen supple poems have both a strong sense of unity and a wide spectrum of forms, themes, and moods. Virtuosic writing combines with jagged feeling, and the end result is engaging, dramatic, and unpredictable.”—Henri Cole

“These poems have a strong voice and a bold reach: they turn outwards, finding big subjects and solid narratives. They seek to make a world: and then they persuade the reader to live in it.”—Eavan Boland

Fred Lieb’s team history of the Detroit Tigers was originally published in1946 as part of the celebrated series of major league team histories published by G. P. Putnam. With their colorful prose and delightful narratives, the Putnam books have been described as the Cadillac of team histories and have become prized collectibles for baseball readers and historians.