Christian P. Potholm – författare

Swaziland: The Dynamics of Political Modernization by Christian P. Potholm offers a compelling study of how a small Southern African kingdom navigated the turbulent transition from colonial dependency to modern nationhood. At its center is Sobhuza II, whose remarkable political skill enabled the Swazi monarchy not only to survive decolonization—a moment that spelled decline for many traditional African rulers—but to expand its authority into the structures of an independent state. Drawing on extensive fieldwork in Swaziland, Britain, and Ghana, Potholm examines how tradition, cultural cohesion, and strategic adaptation gave the monarchy unusual resilience in an era when nationalism and new political elites were expected to eclipse older forms of authority.Tracing developments from the colonial encounter through independence in 1968, Potholm situates Swaziland’s experience within the broader patterns of Southern Africa, where apartheid South Africa and white-settler regimes in Rhodesia and Mozambique exerted constant pressure. The book’s analysis demonstrates how modernization did not automatically erode traditional authority but could, under certain conditions, reinforce and even strengthen it. By showing how Sobhuza II and the Swazi leadership transformed cultural institutions into effective tools of political consolidation, Swaziland challenges assumptions about African political change and offers a nuanced account of modernization that blends continuity and adaptation.This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1972.

Swaziland: The Dynamics of Political Modernization by Christian P. Potholm offers a compelling study of how a small Southern African kingdom navigated the turbulent transition from colonial dependency to modern nationhood. At its center is Sobhuza II, whose remarkable political skill enabled the Swazi monarchy not only to survive decolonization—a moment that spelled decline for many traditional African rulers—but to expand its authority into the structures of an independent state. Drawing on extensive fieldwork in Swaziland, Britain, and Ghana, Potholm examines how tradition, cultural cohesion, and strategic adaptation gave the monarchy unusual resilience in an era when nationalism and new political elites were expected to eclipse older forms of authority.Tracing developments from the colonial encounter through independence in 1968, Potholm situates Swaziland’s experience within the broader patterns of Southern Africa, where apartheid South Africa and white-settler regimes in Rhodesia and Mozambique exerted constant pressure. The book’s analysis demonstrates how modernization did not automatically erode traditional authority but could, under certain conditions, reinforce and even strengthen it. By showing how Sobhuza II and the Swazi leadership transformed cultural institutions into effective tools of political consolidation, Swaziland challenges assumptions about African political change and offers a nuanced account of modernization that blends continuity and adaptation.This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1972.

Scholar and avid campaign watcher Christian P. Potholm brings to bear his enthusiasm for politics, and his intricate understanding of campaign strategy, in This Splendid Game: Maine Campaigns and Elections, 1940-2002. For each decade covered, Potholm briefly outlines all of Maine's U.S. Senate, U.S. House, and gubernatorial elections, then delves deeper into one campaign. He examines how Margaret Chase Smith became the first woman elected to the Senate, in 1948. He looks into which factors enabled the "Muskie revolution," beginning when Maine's long-in-power Republican party lost the governorship to the Democrat Ed Muskie in 1954, and cresting in the Democrat Ken Curtis's hard-fought gubernatorial re-election victory in 1970. He explores how the Republican counter-revolution took hold when Bill Cohen was elected to Congress in 1972, after having won many voters by walking about 600 miles across the state; and why in 1974 and 1994 Mainers chose Independent governors, respectively James Longley, Sr., and Angus King. And he examines how the Maine Yankee nuclear power plant survived the 1980 referendum on its possible shut-down. Throughout the book, Potholm focuses especially on the dynamics of candidates' and groups' use of polling and the media. This Splendid Game yields valuable insights into politics in Maine and the art of the political campaign.

Christian Potholm has worked as a political insider and activist for much of the last forty years, dividing his time between the classroom and the election arena. By analyzing the interactive ebbs and flows of political campaigns, Potholm uses both quantitative and qualitative analysis to understand the process and make predictions regarding the outcome. He contends that political campaigns waged in the State of Maine display a strong dynamic quality independent of the instant polls and reports that our media sources use to predict outcomes. Through quantitative analysis, Potholm shows that Maine political campaigns are underpinned by a positive sense of well being unique to the country, a character that celebrates its freedom and essence in all facets of society. Potholm dissects his study using data as well as anecdotal references to share the political and psychological dimensions of Maine politics in all of their dynamism.

Christian Potholm has worked as a political insider and activist for much of the last forty years, dividing his time between the classroom and the election arena. By analyzing the interactive ebbs and flows of political campaigns, Potholm uses both quantitative and qualitative analysis to understand the process and make predictions regarding the outcome. He contends that political campaigns waged in the State of Maine display a strong dynamic quality independent of the instant polls and reports that our media sources use to predict outcomes. Through quantitative analysis, Potholm shows that Maine political campaigns are underpinned by a positive sense of well being unique to the country, a character that celebrates its freedom and essence in all facets of society. Potholm dissects his study using data as well as anecdotal references to share the political and psychological dimensions of Maine politics in all of their dynamism.

War Wisdom: A Cross Cultural Sampling is a unique combination of directory and analysis. It provides a relevant “universe” of quotations, together with their authors, about war from various ages and across a large number of societies including those found in China, Japan, Persia, Mongolia, Europe, and America (both North and South), as well as Native American nations and Africa. A lengthy introductory essay presents and analyzes a dozen relevant themes found throughout those cultures, themes which show a pattern of very widespread, if not universal, appeal. Of particular relevance is the author’s engagement with the conflicting wisdom pertaining to war found within the same society as well as common themes appearing across cultures, societies, and time frames.

The third book in Professor Christian Potholm’s war trilogy (which includes Winning at War and War Wisdom), Understanding War provides a most workable bibliography dealing with the vast literature on war and warfare. As such, it provides insights into over 3000 works on this overwhelmingly extensive material. Understanding War is thus the most comprehensive annotated bibliography available today.Moreover, by dividing war material into eighteen overarching themes of analysis and fifty seminal topics, and focusing on these, Understanding War enables the reader to access and understand the broadest possible array of materials across both time and space, beginning with the earliest forms of warfare and concluding with the contemporary situation.Stimulating and thought-provoking, this volume is essential for an understanding of the breadth and depth of the vast scholarship dealing with war and warfare through human history and across cultures.

Potholm, a professor at Bowdoin and a prominent campaign consultant, here shares his insights into and enthusiasm for the democratic process. According to Potholm, the presidential election of 2000 revealed the strengths of our democratic system, not the weaknesses. What's more, it made for great entertainment. In The Delights of Democracy, Potholm shares his thoughts on why low voter turn-out is not exactly a bad thing, why Clinton was a good Republican president (that's right), how all political parties should be skilled in putting themselves in their opponents' position, how smart politicians can make use of public polling, how people who don't care about the abortion debate are the decisive group in votes on the issue, and more. Filled with examples from his behind-the-scenes political career, Potholm's book informs readers what Americans really mean when they call their country a democracy.

What are the independent variables that determine success in war? Drawing on 40 years of studying and teaching war, political scientist Christian P. Potholm presents a 'template of Mars,' seven variables that have served as predictors of military success over time and across cultures. In Winning at War, Potholm explains these variables—technology, sustained ruthlessness, discipline, receptivity to innovation, protection of military capital from civilians and rulers, will, and the belief that there will always be another war—and provides case studies of their implementation, from ancient battles to today.

Hiding in Plain Sight: Women Warriors throughout Time and Space takes the many, long-standing dimensions of military history, including the various modalities of warfare across cultures and periods, and integrates them with the more recent and very substantial contributions of social history, women’s history, black history, feminist theory, LGBTQ community, and other perspectives. By providing an extensive annotated bibliography of the new findings, the work provides the reader with an exciting compilation of new knowledge placed within a longstanding military historical framework, one which provides a broader study and understanding of warfare into which to put the very recent, disparate findings culled from many disciplines. The book reaffirms that women have long been deeply embedded in the practice of warfare, not simply as victims or minor curiosities, but as important actors—tactically, strategically, in combat, and directing warfare from afar—just as their male counterparts. The concomitant amalgam also shows that certain types and patterns of warfare such as the defense of castles and fortresses, commanding a ship or a fleet, revolutionary warfare, and today’s drone and cyber-forms of warfare have been more conducive to female activity than other forms of warfare, even as women are also present in a wider variety of other broader temporal and geographical dimensions of the history of warfare.Hiding in Plain Sight is the only extensive annotated bibliography currently available which provides such a holistic overview of recent scholarship by grounding that scholarship in the existing military canon and history.

1972 was a true watershed in Maine politics. Following a hundred years of Republican dominance, Democrats led by Senator Ed Muskie had achieved a string of victories that threatened to sweep Republicans from the board of congressional and gubernatorial offices. On election day only the win by first time Republican congressional candidate Bill Cohen would stop the Democrat shut out. Cohen won by determination and perseverance, charisma, and grit, and by his campaign 650-mile walk across Maine’s expansive second congressional district from Gilead on the New Hampshire border to Ft. Kent on the Canadian border. The Walk, as it became known, was an over-arching feature of that campaign and soon became a staple of the subsequent successful campaigns by congressional, senate, and gubernatorial candidates in the Pine Tree State. On the fiftieth anniversary of a campaign that would change the course of Maine politics and propel Cohen onto the national political stage where he would play prominent roles in the House, Senate, and as secretary of defense, this book captures, in the vivid and often surprising words of the participants, how The Walk came to be.

Hiding in Plain Sight: Women Warriors throughout Time and Space takes the many, long-standing dimensions of military history, including the various modalities of warfare across cultures and periods, and integrates them with the more recent and very substantial contributions of social history, women’s history, black history, feminist theory, LGBTQ community, and other perspectives. By providing an extensive annotated bibliography of the new findings, the work provides the reader with an exciting compilation of new knowledge placed within a longstanding military historical framework, one which provides a broader study and understanding of warfare into which to put the very recent, disparate findings culled from many disciplines. The book reaffirms that women have long been deeply embedded in the practice of warfare, not simply as victims or minor curiosities, but as important actors—tactically, strategically, in combat, and directing warfare from afar—just as their male counterparts. The concomitant amalgam also shows that certain types and patterns of warfare such as the defense of castles and fortresses, commanding a ship or a fleet, revolutionary warfare, and today’s drone and cyber-forms of warfare have been more conducive to female activity than other forms of warfare, even as women are also present in a wider variety of other broader temporal and geographical dimensions of the history of warfare.Hiding in Plain Sight is the only extensive annotated bibliography currently available which provides such a holistic overview of recent scholarship by grounding that scholarship in the existing military canon and history.

As a Maine Guide for 20 years and a hunter and fisherman since childhood, Christian Potholm knows the woods and waters of Maine from the coast to the North Woods. He brings it all to life with these humorous tales, astonishing and intriguing characters, and real-life dialogue. These are authentic, how-they-talk, what-they-do, Maine hunting and fishing stories with Maine guides, wardens, and sports, all presented in full blossom. Steeped in the old-time lore of the Maine outdoors, these yarns do more than capture hunting and fishing tradition in Maine, they also bring to life the rural subculture with all its time honored values and real people.