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In 1948, just as the Cold War was settling into the form it would maintain for nearly half a century, major antagonists the United States and Russia began maneuvering into a series of dangerously hostile encounters. Trouble had broken out in Poland and Czechoslovakia, but it was in Germany, which had been at the heart of World Wars One and Two, that the first potentially explosive confrontation developed. The USSR, which had suffered more at Germany's hands than the rest of the Allies combined, may have viewed developments there with heightened fear and irritability. When the western Allies moved to consolidate their areas of control in occupied Germany, the USSR responded by cutting off land access to West Berlin, holding over two million residents of that city hostage in an aggressive act of brinkmanship. Into this difficult situation the Americans placed General William Henry Tunner. He was given a task that seemed doomed to failure - to supply a major city by air with everything it needed to survive from food to a winter's supply of coal - and made it a brilliant success, astonishing the world in a major public relations defeat for the Soviets, and demonstrating the unexpected capacity of air fleets in a postwar world.

Yucatan has been called 'a world apart' - cut off from the rest of Mexico by geography and culture. Yet, despite its peripheral location, the region experienced substantial change in the decades after independence. As elsewhere in Mexico, apostles of modernization introduced policies intended to remold Yucatan in the image of the advanced nations of the day. Indeed, modernizing change began in the late colonial era and continued throughout the 19th century as traditional patterns of land tenure were altered and efforts were made to divest the Catholic Church of its wealth and political and intellectual influence. Some changes, however, produced fierce resistance from both elites and humbler Yucatecans and modernizers were frequently forced to retreat or at least reach accommodation with their foes. Covering topics from the early 19th century to the late 20th century, the essays in this collection illuminate both the processes of change and the negative reactions that they frequently elicited. The diversity of disciplines covered by this volume - history, anthropology, sociology, economics - illuminates at least three overriding challenges for study of the peninsula today. One is politics after the decline of the Institutional Revolutionary Party: What are the important institutions, practices, and discourses of politics in a post-postrevolutionary era? A second trend is the scholarly demystification of the Maya: Anthropologists have shown the difficulties of applying monolithic terms like Maya in a society where ethnic relations are often situational and ethnic boundaries are fluid. And a third consideration: researchers are only now beginning to grapple with the region's transition to a post-henequen economy based on tourism, migration, and the assembly plants known as maquiladoras. Challenges from agribusiness and industry will no doubt continue to affect the peninsula's fragile Karst topography and unique environments.

William Bartram was a naturalist, an artist, and the author of ""Travels through North and South Carolina"", ""Georgia"", ""East and West Florida"", ""The Cherokee Country"", the ""Extensive Territories of the Muscogulees, or Creek Confederacy"", and the ""Country of the Choctaws"". The book, based on his journey across the South, reflects a remarkable coming of age. In 1773, Bartram - a British colonist - departed his family home near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; in 1777, he returned as a citizen of an emerging nation, the United States. The account of his journey, published in 1791, established a national benchmark for nature writing and remains a classic of American literature, scientific writing, and history. Brought up as a Quaker, Bartram portrayed nature through a poetic lens of experience as well as scientific observation, and his work provides a window on 18th-century southern landscapes. Particularly enlightening and appealing are Bartram's detailed accounts of Seminole, Creek, and Cherokee peoples. ""The Bartram Trail Conference"" fosters Bartram scholarship through biennial conferences held along the route of his travels. This richly illustrated volume of essays, a selection from recent conferences, brings together scholarly contributions from history, archaeology, and botany. The authors discuss the political and personal context of his travels; species of interest to Bartram; Creek architecture; foodways in the 18th-century south, particularly those of Indian groups that Bartram encountered; rediscovery of a lost Bartram manuscript; new techniques for charting Bartram's trail and imaging his collections; and Bartram's place in contemporary environmental issues.

The prehistoric civic-ceremonial center of Tibes is located on the southern coast of Puerto Rico, just north of the modern coastal city of Ponce. Protected on two sides by a river, and on the other two sides by hills, this approximately 10.5 acre site remains as fertile and productive today as when first occupied over 2,000 years ago. Such a rich region would have been a choice location for native people because of the diversity in all resources, from land, air, and sea - and also symbolically crucial as a liminal space within the landscape. It may have been regarded as a space charged with numen or cosmic energy where different parts of the cosmos (natural vs. supernatural, or world of the living vs. world of the dead) overlap. Archaeological evidence reveals a long occupation, about 1,000 years, possibly followed by an extensive period of sporadic ceremonial use after the site itself was practically abandoned. In this volume, nineteen Caribbeanists, across a wide academic spectrum, examine the geophysical, paleoethnobotanical, faunal, lithics, base rock, osteology, bone chemistry and nutrition, social landscape, and ceremonial constructs employed at Tibes. These scholars provide a concise, well-presented, comprehensive analysis of the evidence for local level changes in household economy, internal organization, accessibility to economic, religious, and symbolic resources related to the development and internal operation of socially stratified societies in the Caribbean.

No state has embraced and preserved its civil rights history more than Alabama. Nor is there a place where that history is richer. ""Alabama's Civil Rights Trail"" tells of Alabama's great civil rights events, as well as its lesser-known moments, in a compact and accessible narrative paired with a guide to Alabama's preserved civil rights sites and monuments. In his history of Alabama's civil rights movement, ""Cradle of Freedom"", Frye Gaillard contends that Alabama played the lead role in a historic movement that made all citizens of the nation, black and white, more free. This book, geared toward the casual traveler and the serious student alike, showcases in a vividly illustrated and compelling manner valuable and rich details. It provides a user-friendly, graphic tool for the growing number of travelers, students, and civil rights pilgrims who visit the state annually. The story of the civil rights movement in Alabama is told city by city, region by region, and town by town, with entries on Montgomery, Birmingham, Selma, Tuscaloosa, Tuskegee, and Mobile, as well as chapters on the Black Belt and the Alabama hill country. Smaller but important locales such as Greensboro, Monroeville, and Scottsboro are included, as are more obscure sites like Hale County's Safe House Black History Museum and the birthplace of the Black Panther Party in Lowndes County. The University of Alabama Press wishes to gratefully acknowledge Ed Rogers and the Office of the Provost of The University of Alabama for their generous support of this publication.

Recollections of War Times is a dramatically improved edition of William A. 'Gus' McClendon's memoir of his service in the 15th Alabama Infantry. It has long been recognized as among the rarest books by any veteran of the Army of Northern Virginia. Previously printed in 1909, copies of that edition are exceedingly rare, and the few that exist are in very poor condition. Keith S. Bohannon has conducted relentless research that uncovered a gratifying array of new information about McClendon, as well as new striking photographs. The introduction based on that research, full of details acquired from arcane sources that throw new light on the subject, might be a model for the genre. Bohannon's new exhaustive index also makes McClendon's memoir notably more accessible. 'Gus' McClendon joined the 15th Alabama Infantry Regiment, and served in many of the Eastern Theater engagements. More than fifty years later, he sent down his reminiscences, still an unreconstructed Southern patriot, although able to look back with some amusement on his younger self.

Taming Alabama focuses on persons and groups who sought to bring about reforms in the political, legal, and social worlds of Alabama. Most of the subjects of these essays accepted the fundamental values of nineteenth and early twentieth century white southern society; and all believed, or came to believe, in the transforming power of law. As a starting point in creating the groundwork of genuine civility and progress in the state, these reformers insisted on equal treatment and due process in elections, allocation of resources, and legal proceedings. To an educator like Julia Tutwiler or a clergyman like James F. Smith, due process was a question of simple fairness or Christian principle. To lawyers like Benjamin F. Porter, Thomas Goode Jones, or Henry D. Clayton, devotion to due process was part of the true religion of the common law. To a former Populist radical like Joseph C. Manning, due process and a free ballot were requisites for the transformation of society.

On November 24, 1943, a Japanese torpedo plunged into the starboard side of the American escort carrier USS Liscome Bay. The torpedo struck the thin-skinned carrier in the worst possible place the bomb storage area. The resulting explosion could be seen 16 miles away, literally ripping the Liscome Bay in half and killing 644 of her crew. In terms of lives lost, it was the costliest carrier sinking in United States naval history. Liscome Bay's loss came on her first combat operation: the American invasion of the Gilbert Islands. Despite her short career, she touched a number of remarkable and famous lives. Doris Miller, the first black American sailor to win the Navy Cross, lost his life, as did Rear Admiral Henry Mullinax, one of the Navy's first ""air admirals."" John Crommelin was the senior officer to survive the sinking. Later in his career, Crommelin, a decorated naval aviator himself, sparked the famous Revolt of the Admirals, which helped save the role of naval aviation in America's Cold War military. James Noles's account of the Liscome Bay and those who served aboard her is based on interviews with the ship's survivors and an unpublished memoir that the ship's pay officer made available to the author. This readable, compelling book pays homage to the crew by telling their story of experience and sacrifice.

Sir John Cotesworth Slessor (1897-1979) was one of Great Britain's most influential airmen. He played a significant role in building the World War II Anglo-American air power partnership as an air planner on the Royal Air Force Staff, the British Chiefs of Staff, and the Combined Chiefs of Staff. He coordinated allied strategy in 1940-41, helped create an Anglo-American bomber alliance in 1942, and drafted the compromise at the Casablanca Conference that broke a deadlock in Anglo-American strategic debate. Also, Slessor was instrumental in defeating the U-boat menace as RAF Coastal Commander, and later shared responsibility for directing Allied air operations in the Mediterranean. Few aspects of the allied air effort escaped his influence: pilot training, aircraft procurement, and dissemination of operational intelligence and information all depended to a degree on Slessor. His influence on Anglo-American operational planning paved the way for a level of cooperation and combined action never before undertaken by the military forces of two great nations.