When the war ended in 1865, Galveston was the only major port still in Confederate hands. In this beautifully written narrative history, Ed Cotham draws upon years of archival and on-site research, as well as rare historical photographs, drawings, and maps, to chronicle the Civil War years in Galveston.

His story encompasses all the military engagements that took place in the city and on Galveston Bay, including the dramatic Battle of Galveston, in which Confederate forces retook the city on New Year's Day, 1863. Cotham sets the events in Galveston within the overall conduct of the war, revealing how the city's loss was a great strategic impediment to the North.

Through his pages pass major figures of the era, as well as ordinary soldiers, sailors, and citizens of Galveston, whose courage in the face of privation and danger adds an inspiring dimension to the story (less)

After losing almost all her overseas empire in 1898, Spain faced the new century handicapped by international isolation, a backward economy, and a stagnant and elitist political system. This book tells the gripping story of Spain's long and often painful struggle towards modernity.

During this period, the country has seen two monarchies, one republic, two dictatorships and one of the bloodiest civil wars in Europe's recent history. The author provides a comprehensive, thorough and detailed analysis of Spain's political, social and economic evolution throughout this century, examining the crisis and collapse of clientelist politics and the attempts at reform during the inter-war years through military dictatorship and progressive republic; the Nationalist victory and Franco's authoritarian rule; the dismantlement of the Francoist state; and the consolidation of democracy.

There is also an assessment of Spain's current political situation (less)

They had seen its power exercised regularly in economics, if only sporadically in politics. But World War Il, and the landscape it left behind, prompted American leaders and the Congress to conclude that they had to use the nation's strength to protect and advance its interests.

The end of the Cold War will not end the debate over the structural reasons for that transformation of American attitudes and actions. The essays in this book reflect a variety of views on the question of causation.

The distinguished group of contributors provide many and varied insights into this crucial change and make America Unbound an important contribution to the history of the period (less)

Develops and sustains a narrative line not usually available in survey histories of China, presenting an internal coherence within each chapter that provides not only an integrated picture of political, cultural, and economic developments but also a convenient foundation to grasp the sequence of fundamental changes in China. Provides a brief summary of China's past history, focusing on the ideology and institutions that molded Chinese political culture.

Covers critical transition periods, such as the collapse of the Manchu dynasty and the establishment of the first republic; the shift of power from the Nationalists to the Communists; and the rise of Deng Xiao-ping after the passing away of Mao Ze-dong. Expands coverage on many areas, including Tibet, PRC in Taiwan, and Hong Kong; the Sino-Indian war of 1962, and the Sino-Vietnamese war of 1979; plus social, economic, and cultural topics in various periods (less)

Whereas most historians treat the event solely as a massive labor strike that targeted the railroads, David O. Stowell examines America's predicament more broadly to uncover the roots of this rebellion.

He studies the urban origins of the Strike in three upstate New York cities--Buffalo, Albany, and Syracuse. He finds that locomotives rumbled through crowded urban spaces, sending panicked horses and their wagons careening through streets.

Hundreds of people were killed and injured with appalling regularity. The trains also disrupted street traffic and obstructed certain forms of commerce.

For these reasons, Stowell argues, The Great Strike was not simply an uprising fueled by disgruntled workers. Rather, it was a grave reflection of one of the most direct and damaging ways many people experienced the Industrial Revolution.

"Through meticulously crafted case studies . .

. the author advances the thesis that the strike had urban roots, that in substantial part it represented a community uprising.

. .

.A particular strength of the book is Stowell's description of the horrendous accidents, the toll in human life, and the continual disruption of craft, business, and ordinary movement engendered by building railroads into the heart of cities.

"--Charles N. Glaab, "American Historical Review (less)

NYT (less)

Some distinguished themselves as ruthless murders. Outnumbering German police manpower in these areas, the local police were the foot-soldiers of the Holocaust in the east (less)

. .

This is a fine ethnography that is a must-read for all interested in gender relations in contemporary Latin America. It is also one of the best current discussions on the little-studied phenomenon of religious change in Mexico.

. .

. Eber also provides a wonderful model of how to write a readable ethnography that treats its subjects with dignity and respect and honestly integrates the trials and tribulations of the ethnographer in the process.

" -Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute "Women and Alcohol is a book worth reading. .

. .

The book's informal tone and interesting topic make it appealing to a wide audience, including casual readers and undergraduate classes. Furthermore, Eber's cross-cultural insight into alcohol dependency is relevant not only for anthropologists but also for health care professionals and others who deal with substance abuse.

" -Latin American Indian Literatures Journal Healing roles and rituals involving alcohol are a major source of power and identity for women and men in Highland Chiapas, Mexico, where abstention from alcohol can bring a loss of meaningful roles and of a sense of community. Yet, as in other parts of the world, alcohol use sometimes leads to abuse, whose effects must then be combated by individuals and the community.

In this pioneering ethnography, Christine Eber looks at women and drinking in the community of San Pedro Chenalho to address the issues of women's identities, roles, relationships, and sources of power. She explores various personal andsocial strategies women use to avoid problem drinking, including conversion to Protestant religions, membership in cooperatives or Catholic Action, and modification of ritual forms with substitute beverages.

The book's women-centered perspective reveals important data on women and drinking not reported in earlier ethnographies of Highland Chiapas communities. Eber's reflexive approach, blending the women's stories, analyses, songs, and prayers with her own and other ethnographers' views, shows how Western, individualistic approaches to the problems of alcohol abuse are inadequate for understanding women's experiences with problem and ritual drinking in a non-Western culture.

In a new epilogue, Christine Eber describes how events of the last decade, including the Zapatista uprising, have strengthened women's resolve to gain greater control over their lives by controlling the effects of alcohol in the community (less)

In the ensuing chaos, no one gave much thought to the ship in the next slip, the High Flyer. It exploded sixteen hours later.

"--BOOK JACKET. "The story of the Texas City explosions - America's worst industrial disaster in terms of casualties - has never been fully told until now.

In this book, Hugh W. Stephens draws on official reports, newspaper and magazine articles, personal letters, and interviews with several dozen survivors to provide the first full account of the disaster at Texas City.

"--BOOK JACKET. "Stephens describes the two explosions and the heroic efforts of Southeast Texans to rescue survivors and cope with extensive property damage.

At the same time, he explores why the disaster occurred, showing how a chain of indifference and negligence made a serious industrial accident almost inevitable, while a lack of emergency planning allowed it to escalate into a major catastrophe. This gripping, cautionary tale holds important lessons for a wide reading public.

"--BOOK JACKET (less)

150,000 first printing. NYT (less)

Comparisons are made between the makeshift economy of poor women and the occupational identities, and preoccupations, of the middling and elite classes. This fascinating and well-illustrated book reconstructs the mental and material world of Tudor and Stuart women, and is sure to become the standard text on the subject (less)

In this pathbreaking book, Patricia Fortini Brown focuses on Venice's Golden Age - from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century - and shows how it was influenced by antiquity, by its Byzantine heritage, and by its own historical experience. Drawing on such remains of vernacular culture as inscriptions, medals, and travelers' accounts, on more learned humanist and antiquarian writings, and, most importantly, on the art of the period, Brown explores Venice's evolving sense of the past.

She begins with the late middle ages, when Venice sought to invent a dignified civic past by means of object, image, and text. Moving on to the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, she discusses the collecting and recording of antiquities and the incorporation of Roman forms and motifs into its Byzantine and Gothic urban fabric.

She notes, as well, the emergence of a new imperializing rhetoric in its historical writing. Toward the end of the fifteenth century, Brown observes the personal appropriation of classical motifs and prerogatives to celebrate not only the state, but also the individual and the family, and the fabrication of a lost world of pastoral myth and archaeological fantasy in art and vernacular literature.

Through the adoption of a literary and architectural vocabulary of classical antiquity in the sixteenth century, civic Venice is shown to claim for itself an identity that is universalizing as well as unique (less)

According to Bruce Redford, the Tour offered a heady combination of aesthetic, social political, and sexual experience, and it provided its alumni with a life-long source of cultural and political authority. Yet from the beginning the Tour was also viewed with deep suspicion: it was feared that the very experiences that completed the British gentleman might well undo him.

The aspiration and ambivalence that characterize the Tour attached themselves most powerfully to the experience of Venice. Drawing on a wide range of materials - from guidebooks to portraits, from satirical poems to garden pavilions - Redford investigates Venice's power of attraction for the British, and shows that it was a source of many echoes and metaphors of Britain's own cultural, political, and geographical situation (less)

W. Brands offers a fresh look at Johnson's handling of international relations, putting Vietnam in the context of the many crises he confronted and the outdated policies of global containment he inherited.

The result is a fascinating portrait of a master politician at work, maneuvering through a series of successes that, ironically, help explain his great failure in Vietnam (less)