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The Afterlives of the Terror: Facing the Legacies of Mass Violence in Postrevolutionary France

Ronen Steinberg

This book examines how those who lived through the Reign of Terror of the French Revolution struggled to come to terms with it. It shows that, contrary to claims that are made often in the ... More

This book examines how those who lived through the Reign of Terror of the French Revolution struggled to come to terms with it. It shows that, contrary to claims that are made often in the literature, there were complicated, painful, and often honest debates about how to deal with the effects of mass violence on self and society after the Terror. Revolutionary leaders, relatives of victims, and ordinary citizens argued about how to hold those responsible for the violence accountable, how to offer some sort of relief to the victims, and how to commemorate this controversial episode in the politically charged climate of post-revolutionary France. Their solutions were not perfect, but their debates were innovative. The dilemmas that they struggled with, dilemmas around retribution, redress, and remembrance, derived from the democratizing impulses of the Revolution. Drawing on the concept of transitional justice and on the literature about the major traumas of the twentieth century, this book argues that the modern question of what to do with difficult pasts was born out of the social and political upheavals of the 18th century’s Age of Revolutions. Less

Civil Vengeance: Literature, Culture, and Early Modern Revenge

Emily L. King

Civil Vengeance offers a new way of conceptualizing early modern revenge and its relationship to civility. In its attention to what constitutes vengeance, the book makes visible a more comprehensive ... More

Civil Vengeance offers a new way of conceptualizing early modern revenge and its relationship to civility. In its attention to what constitutes vengeance, the book makes visible a more comprehensive spectrum of retaliation and examines quotidian acts of revenge that support sociality and enhance the power of civil institutions. Rather than relegating vengeance to the social periphery, the book uncovers how facets of civil society—church, law, and education—rely on the dynamic of revenge to augment their power. Through its innovative readings of conduct manuals, medical tracts, legal writings, and sermons, the book proposes a revised lineage of revenge literature and places these texts alongside traditional revenge plays such as Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy, John Marston’s Antonio’s Revenge, and Thomas Middleton’s The Revenger’s Tragedy. Shifting attention from episodic revenge to quotidian forms, Civil Vengeance theorizes anew the manner in which retaliation informs identity formation, interpersonal relationships, and the construction of the social body.Less

The Day After: Why America Wins the War but Loses the Peace

Brendan Gallagher

This book explores why, in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, we initially mopped the floor with our enemies only to discover we had no coherent plan to manage the “day after.” The ensuing postwar ... More

This book explores why, in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, we initially mopped the floor with our enemies only to discover we had no coherent plan to manage the “day after.” The ensuing postwar debacles had staggering consequences that continue to reverberate today. How did this happen? This book argues there is a tension between our desire to create a democracy and our competing desire to pullout as soon as possible. Our leaders often use magical thinking to try to accomplish both aims and keep everyone happy – but such an incoherent approach is likely to sow chaos. This book incorporates new interviews with dozens of civilian and military officials, ranging from U.S. cabinet secretaries to four-star generals. It also sheds light on how, in Kosovo, we lowered our postwar aims to quietly achieve a surprising partial success. Overall, this book seeks to help us learn from our recent past, and thereby avoid further disasters.Less

Heaven's Wrath: The Protestant Reformation and the Dutch West India Company in the Atlantic World

D. Noorlander

Heaven’s Wrath explores the religious thought and religious rites of the early Dutch Atlantic world. The book argues that the Reformed Church and the West India Company forged and maintained a close ... More

Heaven’s Wrath explores the religious thought and religious rites of the early Dutch Atlantic world. The book argues that the Reformed Church and the West India Company forged and maintained a close union, with considerable consequences. Merchants, officers, sailors, and soldiers found in their faith an ideology and justification for mercantile, martial activities. The company, on the other hand, supported the church financially in Europe and helped spread Calvinism to other continents. Calvinist employees and colonists both benefitted from the familiar, comforting aspects of religious instruction and public worship. But the church-company union had a destructive side, too: Calvinists became the instruments of divine wrath in fighting Catholic enemies and punishing sinners and non-conformers in colonial courts, all of which imposed costs that the small Dutch Republic and its people-strapped colonies could not afford. At the same time, the Reformed Church in the Netherlands contributed to problems later blamed on the West India Company because the church kept an iron grip on colonial hires, publications, and organization. Heaven’s Wrath shows that the expense of the Calvinist-backed war and the church’s meticulous, worried management of colonial affairs hampered the mission and reduced the size and import of the Dutch Atlantic world.Less

Lethal Provocation: The Constantine Murders and the Politics of French Algeria

Joshua Cole

This book explores the history of an anti-Jewish riot in 1934 in t Constantine, French Algeria, in which 25 Jews and 3 Muslims died. Understood at the time as the result of long-standing tensions ... More

This book explores the history of an anti-Jewish riot in 1934 in t Constantine, French Algeria, in which 25 Jews and 3 Muslims died. Understood at the time as the result of long-standing tensions between Muslims and Jews in North Africa, the riot was closely related to contemporary debates about reforming the colonial regime in Algeria. These debates divided the population and their political representatives, leaving Constantine vulnerable to acts of provocation by French nationalist extremists who appear to have been responsible for the majority of the murders. Although the police and some local officials were aware of these acts of provocation, the story was successfully covered up in the subsequent trials and in the official reports. The book sets these events in a broad chronological context, considering the ways that the history of colonialism in Algeria recast the relationship between Muslims, Jews, and Europeans in North Africa.Less

The Liberty Hyde Bailey Gardener's Companion: Essential Writings

Liberty Hyde Bailey

John Stempien and John Linstrom (eds)

The Liberty Hyde Bailey Gardener's Companion: Essential Writings collects the best and most accessible literary garden writings of Liberty Hyde Bailey, the Father of Modern Horticulture and founder ... More

The Liberty Hyde Bailey Gardener's Companion: Essential Writings collects the best and most accessible literary garden writings of Liberty Hyde Bailey, the Father of Modern Horticulture and founder of the New Agrarianism. Despite Bailey's huge influence as a journalistic popularizer of amateur gardening from the late nineteenth century through the first half of the twentieth, and despite the rise in recent years of widespread interest in gardening, such an anthology has never been compiled until now. The essays and poems that make up the collection include work from Bailey's most beautiful literary and philosophical books about plants and people, as well as essays from periodicals that have never been published in book form, and even an essay that Bailey read over nationalized radio in 1930 and has never before appeared in print. The result of about a decade of research and collecting on the part of the editors, The Liberty Hyde Bailey Gardener's Companion will provide the best introduction available to those unfamiliar with Bailey's writing, and for the seasoned Bailey enthusiast it will offer a trove of delightful and unexpected marvels.Less

The Nuclear Spies: America's Atomic Intelligence Operation against Hitler and Stalin

Vince Houghton

The subject of this book is the US atomic intelligence effort against both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union in the period 1942-1949. Both of these intelligence efforts operated within the framework ... More

The subject of this book is the US atomic intelligence effort against both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union in the period 1942-1949. Both of these intelligence efforts operated within the framework of an entirely new field of intelligence: scientific intelligence. Because of the atomic bomb, for the first time in history a nation’s scientific resources became a key consideration in assessing a potential national security threat. In September 1949, US intelligence was shocked to discover that the Soviet Union had detonated its first atomic bomb. Coming just four years after the United States had become the world’s first nuclear power, the Soviet atomic bomb was produced in half the time American intelligence had predicted. Compounding the confusion was the fact that American intelligence had engaged in an effort against Nazi Germany that had correctly assessed the status of the German atomic bomb program. This book explores the following: Considering how successfully the US conducted the atomic intelligence effort against the Germans in the Second World War, why was the US Government unable to create an effective atomic intelligence apparatus to monitor Soviet scientific and nuclear capabilities?Less

Rough Draft: Cold War Military Manpower Policy and the Origins of Vietnam-Era Draft Resistance

Amy Rutenberg

This book argues that policy makers’ idealized conceptions of middle-class masculinity directly affected who they targeted for conscription during the Cold War. Along with much of the American ... More

This book argues that policy makers’ idealized conceptions of middle-class masculinity directly affected who they targeted for conscription during the Cold War. Along with much of the American population, federal officials, including those within the Selective Service System, believed college educated men could better protect the nation from the threat of communism as civilians than as soldiers. The availability of deferments for these men grew rapidly between 1945 and 1965, militarizing their occupations and making it less and less likely that middle-class white men would serve in the Cold War military. Meanwhile, officials used the War on Poverty to target poorer men for conscription in the hopes that military service would offer them skills they could use in civilian life. Therefore, while some men resisted military service in Vietnam for reasons of political conscience, most of those who avoided military service did so because manpower polices made it possible. By protecting middle-class breadwinners in the name of national security, policy planners militarized certain civilian roles, a move that, ironically, separated military service from the obligations of masculine citizenship and, ultimately, helped kill the draft in the United States.Less

Theaters of Pardoning

Bernadette Meyler

To address the roots of pardoning’s treatment in contemporary politics and uncover what new formulations of pardoning might contribute, this book examines the role of what it calls “theaters of ... More

To address the roots of pardoning’s treatment in contemporary politics and uncover what new formulations of pardoning might contribute, this book examines the role of what it calls “theaters of pardoning”—a form of tragicomedy—in the drama and politics of seventeenth-century England. Historically, shifts in the representation of pardoning tracked the transition from a more monarchical and judgment-focused to an increasingly parliamentary and legislative vision of sovereignty. On stage, a transformation surreptitiously took place from individual pardons of revenge to more sweeping pardons of revolution. The change can be traced from Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure to later works like Philip Massinger’s The Bondman. In the political arena, the pardon correspondingly came to be envisioned in increasingly law-like terms, culminating in the idea of a general amnesty, or “Act of Oblivion,” implemented by the Restoration Parliament under King Charles II. The figuration of pardoning as lawgiving did not eliminate its connection with sovereignty but instead displaced sovereignty from the King onto Parliament. The link between pardoning and sovereignty has contributed to the suspicion that has more recently surrounded the exercise of pardoning. Only by breaking the connection between pardoning and sovereignty cemented in seventeenth-century England can we reinvigorate pardoning in the polity today.Less

Architects: Portraits of a Practice

Thomas Yarrow

In a large room, on the third floor of an old woollen mill in the South West of England, nine architects spend most of their working lives, designing buildings and overseeing their construction. ... More

In a large room, on the third floor of an old woollen mill in the South West of England, nine architects spend most of their working lives, designing buildings and overseeing their construction. Asked where these come from, architects admit a kind of ignorance: 'Total magic!' as one puts it, 'Something comes from nothing!' Focusing on the everyday lives of architects, the book explores how buildings are assembled through an intimate and elusive choreography of people, materials, places, tools and ideas. Through these interactions, it asks and answers some questions of wider interest: What is the relationship between a working and a personal life? What is creativity? How is it possible to live truthfully in a world of contradiction and compromise? What does it mean to claim to know with authority? Most basically but most fundamentally the book is concerned with the question of what it is like to be an architect, and what lessons others might learn from the example their experience provides. Amongst other things, these have to do with the nature of expert knowledge, design, creativity and the central but less celebrated arts of administration.Less