Texas A&M University Press - Böcker

Although it is not known how many Confederates migrated to South America, their departure was fuelled by bitterness over a lost cause and a distaste for an oppressive victor. This book tells the story of a grim, Quixotic journey of 20,000 Confederates to Brazil at the end of the American Civil War.

William Watson spent two years evading Union gunboats and dealing with the ""sharpers"" who fed off the misfortune of the Civil War. In 1892, using log books, personal papers, and business memoranda, he published this ""plain, blunt,"" account of ""events just as they happened."" The result was a classic adventure tale whose careful description of seafaring in the 1860s gives us a glimpse into a world now closed to us. Watson is the protagonist, but he shares his story with his ship, the Rob Roy, a center-board schooner whose shallow draft and wide beam made it the ideal vessel for slipping over shoals and dashing in and out of blockaded ports. He peoples his account with the good, the bad, and the unlucky, from the likeable and irrepressible Capt. Dave McLusky to the loathsome and dishonest Mr. R. M. He takes his reader from Havana, where land sharks greet incoming sailors, to Galveston, where sharp businessmen and corrupt officials connive to confiscate both profits and ships. His crew braves gales and a hurricane, and he survives plots against his ship and his life. This adventure story is held together by the nuts and bolts of sailing. Watson's discussion of why sail was superior to steam for running blockades is superb; his detailed accounts of outrunning Federal cruisers are fascinating. Through it all, he maintains his honor and guards his profits. For the reader who wants to ply the Gulf of Mexico under sail, play the lottery in Havana, and visit Texas when it was ""a new country,"" Watson is the perfect guide to run the blockade that time imposes on posterity.

In Keeping the Faith, Jennifer Jean Wynot presents a clear and concise history of the trials and evolution of Russian Orthodox monasteries and convents and the important roles they have played in Russian culture, both spiritually and politically, from the abortive reforms of 1905 to the Stallnist purges of the 1930s. She shows how, throughout the Soviet period, Orthodox monks and nuns continued to provide spiritual strength to the people, in spite of severe persecution, and despite the ambivalent relationship the Russian state has had toward the Russian church since the reign of Ivan the Terrible. Focusing her study on two provinces, Smolensk and Moscow, Wynot describes the Soviet oppression and the clandestine struggles of the monks and nuns to uphold the traditions of monasticism and Orthodoxy. Their success against heavy odds enabled them to provide a counterculture to the Soviet regime. Indeed, of all the pre-1917 institutions, the Orthodox Church proved the most resilient. Based on previously unavailable Russian archival sources as well as written memoirs and interviews with surviving monks and nuns, Wynot analyzes the monasteries' adaptation to the Bolshevik regime. She challenges standard Western assumptions that Communism effectively killed the Orthodox Church in Russia. She shows that in fact, the role of monks and nuns in Orthodox monasteries and convents is crucial, and that they are largely responsible for the continuation of Orthodoxy in Russia following the Bolshevik revolution.

Though Dan Summitt retired from the U.S Navy years ago, he still regrets not receiving clearance to fill a submarine missile tube with thirty-five thousand pounds of wet grits and launch it at a very pesky Russian spy ship. In Tales of a Cold War Submariner, Summitt tells the story of his military career, proving that navy life at the height of the Cold War as commander of two nuclear submarines kept him on his toes. He relates his work with Adm. Hyman Rickover, recounts the efforts to stay undetected while patrolling for Soviet submarines, and shares the everyday dangers faced by a submarine crew. Summitt graduated from the Naval Academy in 1947, entered Submarine School, and rose to become deputy chief of staff for the commander of the Submarine Force Atlantic Fleet and chief of staff for the Submarine Flotilla 8. He served as commander of the USS Seadragon on its secret mission to the North Pole, where he rendezvoused with the USS Skate to conduct experiments under the ice. Summitt later took command of the USS Alexander Hamilton, one of forty-one Polaris-class nuclear submarines, which carried sixteen thirty-five-foot-tall missiles. Summitt takes the reader on a tour of this vessel, describing daily life and the routine and not-so-routine missions in close quarters with no outside contact for days or even months. Through it all, the fear of mechanical malfunctions, detection, or imminent attack always lingered. Summitt's anecdotes and descriptions capture this tense era in history.

In the decades following the Civil War, scores of African Americans served in the U.S. Army in the West. The Plains Indians dubbed them buffalo soldiers, and their record in the infantry and cavalry, a record full of dignity and pride, provides one of the most fascinating chapters in the history of the era. This anthology focuses on the careers and accomplishments of black soldiers, the lives they developed for themselves, their relationships to their officers (most of whom were white), their specialized roles (such as that of the Black Seminoles), and the discrimination they faced from the very whites they were trying to protect. In short, this volume offers important insights into the social, cultural, and communal lives of the buffalo soldiers. The selections are written by prominent scholars who have delved into the history of black soldiers in the West. Previously published in scattered journals, the articles are gathered here for the first time in a single volume, providing a rich and accessible resource for students, scholars, and interested general readers. Additionally, the readings in this volume serve in some ways as commentaries on each other, offering in this collected format a cumulative mosaic that was only fragmentary before. Volume editors Glasrud and Searles provide introductions to the volume and to each of its four parts, surveying recent scholarship and offering an interpretive framework. The bibliography that closes the book will also commend itself as a valuable tool for further research.

In the previous century, a large portion of the smallest of the Slavonic nations left their German homeland and migrated to three distant continents. George R. Nielsen, in this revised edition of his classic study of Wendish migration, carefully describes the details of immigration and weighs the possible explanations for the exodus, the settlement, and acculturation patterns that resulted. The earliest emigrants traveled to Australia, but despite efforts to encourage unity, they were unsuccessful, and no single, large Wendish settlement was formed. The largest number migrated to Texas, where at Serbin, under the leadership of pastor Jan Kilian, they formed a Wendish community, retaining their own language in church, school, and home. Local agricultural conditions, however, proved too poor to sustain many people, so the Wends of Texas also scattered and eventually lost most of their ethnic distinctiveness. Smaller numbers of Wends migrated to Canada, Nebraska, and South Africa. These Wends generally settled among Germans and were absorbed by the local German communities. This work promises to continue as the standard reference on the overseas resettlement of these distinctive people.

For almost a millennium, a modest wooden ship lay underwater off the coast of Serce Limani, Turkey, filled with evidence of trade and objects of daily life. The ship, now excavated by the Institute of Nautical Archaeology at Texas A&M University, trafficked in both the Byzantine and Islamic worlds of its time. Known as 'the Glass Wreck', it bore cargo that included three metric tons of glass cullet, including broken Islamic vessels and eighty pieces of intact glassware, along with various artifacts of ship life. This second volume of the discovery's investigation focuses on the excavation, conservation, and study of the glass found in the wreckage. The extensive catalog will be a valuable tool for archaeologists and scholars of Islamic glass and Islamic trade. Further, the systematic methodology and presentation of such a large undertaking will serve as a model for future study across many disciplines.

'I was not willing, but finally agreed...' So wrote Texas pioneer cattle drover William Berry Duncan in his March 1862 diary entry, the day he joined the Confederate Army. Despite his misgivings, Duncan left his prosperous business to lead neighbors and fellow volunteers as commanding officer of cavalry Company F of Spaight's Eleventh Battalion which later became the 21st Texas Infantry in America's Civil War. Philip Caudill's rich account - drawn from Duncan's previously untapped diaries and letters, written by candlelight on the Gulf Coast cattle trail to New Orleans, in Confederate Army camps, and on his southeast Texas farm after the war - reveals the personable Duncan as a man of steadfast integrity and extraordinary leadership. After the war, he returned to his home in Liberty County and battled for survival on the chaotic Reconstruction-era Texas frontier. Supplemented by archival records and complementary accounts, Moss Bluff Rebel paints a picture of everyday life for the Anglo-Texans who settled the Mexican land grants in the early nineteenth century and subsequently became citizens of the proudly independent Texas Republic."Moss Bluff Rebel" will appeal to history lovers of all ages who are attracted to the drama of the Civil War period and interested in the stories of the men and women who shaped the Texas frontier.

In "Claiming Rights and Righting Wrongs in Texas", Emilio Zamora traces the experiences of Mexican workers on the American home front during World War II as they moved from rural to urban areas and sought better-paying jobs in rapidly expanding industries. Contending that discrimination undermined job opportunities, Zamora investigates the intervention by Mexico in the treatment of workers, the U.S. State Department's response, and Texas' emergence as a key site for negotiating the application of the Good Neighbor Policy. He examines the role of women workers, the evolving political struggle, the rise of the liberal-urban coalition, and the conservative tradition in Texas. Zamora also looks closely at civil and labor rights - related efforts, implemented by the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) and the Fair Employment Practice Committee.

Long before the space race captured the world's attention, K.E. Tsiolkovskii first conceived of multi-stage rockets that would later be adapted as the basis of both the U.S. and Soviet rocket programs. Often called the grandfather of Russian rocketry, this provincial scientist was even sanctioned by Stalin to give a speech from Red Square on May Day 1935, lauding the Soviet technological future while also dreaming and expounding on his own visions of conquering the cosmos. Later, the Khrushchev regime used him as a 'poster boy' for Soviet excellence during its Cold War competition with the United States. Ironically, some revisionists have since pointed to such blatant promotion by the Communist Party in an attempt to downplay Tsiolkovskii's scientific contributions. James T. Andrews explores the complexities of this man to show that Tsiolkovskii was much more than either a rocket inventor or a propaganda tool. He was a science popularizer, novelist, technical inventor, and visionary, whose science fiction writings included futuristic drawings of space stations long before they appeared on any engineer's drawing board.Mining a myriad of Russian archives, Andrews produces not only a biographical account but also a study of Soviet technological propaganda, local science education, public culture in the 1920s and 1930s, and the cultural ramifications of space flight.

In 1842, Sam Houston, president of the new Texas Republic, wanted four things: peace with Mexico, peace with the native population, financing from Europe, and productive settlers for his vast, new country. He issued colonization contracts in an effort to meet all these objectives, but only two of President Houston's contracts actually resulted in permanent settlement. "Promised Land" provides a close examination of the circumstances surrounding the colonization contract issued to Henri Castro of France and the contract assumed by Germany's Adelsverein.

In September 2003, seven former heads of the White House Office of Legislative Affairs gathered for the first time ever to compare their experiences working for every president from Richard Nixon to Bill Clinton. For two days, these congressional liaisons, charged with moving their respective presidents' legislative agendas through an independent - and sometimes hostile - Congress, shared first-hand views of the intricacies of presidential-congressional relations: how it works, how it doesn't work, and the fascinating interplay of personalities, events, and politics that happens along the way. Hosted by noted presidential scholar Russell Riley and the University of Virginia's Miller Center of Public Affairs, this seminar also featured a number of invited scholars of American politics, including the eminent Richard E. Neustadt, who appeared just before his death a month later. As explained by Riley, '...these discussions enlighten in two ways: they provide us a revealing glimpse into the inside, usually hidden, business of Washington, and they afford us the considered reflections of a thoughtful group of political veterans'. What makes these exchanges especially compelling, however, is their bipartisan cast, with Republicans Max L. Friedersdorf, William L. Ball III, and Frederick McClure joining Democrats Frank Moore, Charles M. Brain, John Hilley, and Lawrence Stein in thoughtful and friendly conversation.

A member of the distinguished British Huxley family, Julian Huxley (1887-1975) was a man of many talents and enormous energy. At the beginning of his career, he founded the biology department at Rice Institute, where he taught for three years before going on to achieve eminence as a biologist, statesman, and intellectual. While this volume concentrates on Huxley's contributions to field and laboratory biology, when first published in 1992, it also provided the first in-depth examination of his efforts to popularize science and to advance the human species through eugenics. Julian Huxley also encourages consideration of Huxley's religious and social views and his public role in science.

Long before the space race captured the world's attention, K.E. Tsiolkovskii first conceived of multi-stage rockets that would later be adapted as the basis of both the U.S. and Soviet rocket programs. Often called the grandfather of Russian rocketry, this provincial scientist was even sanctioned by Stalin to give a speech from Red Square on May Day 1935, lauding the Soviet technological future while also dreaming and expounding on his own visions of conquering the cosmos. Later, the Khrushchev regime used him as a 'poster boy' for Soviet excellence during its Cold War competition with the United States. Ironically, some revisionists have since pointed to such blatant promotion by the Communist Party in an attempt to downplay Tsiolkovskii's scientific contributions. James T. Andrews explores the complexities of this man to show that Tsiolkovskii was much more than either a rocket inventor or a propaganda tool. He was a science popularizer, novelist, technical inventor, and visionary, whose science fiction writings included futuristic drawings of space stations long before they appeared on any engineer's drawing board.Mining a myriad of Russian archives, Andrews produces not only a biographical account but also a study of Soviet technological propaganda, local science education, public culture in the 1920s and 1930s, and the cultural ramifications of space flight.

In the early twentieth century, Halford Mackinder established geography as a new discipline in English universities, predicted the decline of British influence in world affairs and the rise of European totalitarian regimes, and made the first ascent of Mount Kenya. His views colored American foreign policy during World War II, and his far-reaching ideas - especially his 'Heartland' theory - eventually had great influence on the way leaders of many nations thought about the world. Brian W. Blouet's vivid biography of this remarkable geopolitician describes the major phases of his life and the development of his thought, with a large segment devoted to Mackinder's prescient analyses of world affairs.