Vaughn Scribner – författare

People have been fascinated by merpeople since ancient times. From the sirens of Homer’s Odyssey to Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid and the film Splash (1984), myths, stories and legends of half-human, half-fish creatures abound. In modern times ‘mermaiding’ has gained popularity among cosplayers throughout the world.In Merpeople: A Human History, Vaughn Scribner traces the long history of mermaids and mermen, taking in a wide variety of sources and using 117 striking illustrations. From film to philosophy, church halls to coffee-houses, ancient myth to modern science, Scribner shows that mermaids and tritons are – and always have been – everywhere.

The Revolutionary War is often celebrated as the marking the birth of American republicanism, liberty, and representative democracy. Yet for the tens of thousands of British and Hessian troops sent 3,000 miles across the Atlantic Ocean to wage war under alien skies, such a progressive picture, as Vaughn Scribner reveals, could not have been further from the truth. In Under Alien Skies , Scribner illustrates how foreign soldiers' negative perceptions of the American environment merged with harsh wartime realities to elicit considerable physical, mental, and emotional anguish. Whether trudging through alligator-infested swamps, nursing a comrade back to health in a rain-sodden tent, or digging trenches in a burned-out port city, most who fought in America under the British army's flag ultimately deemed themselves strangers fighting in a strange land. For them, Revolutionary America looked nothing like the ""happy land blessed with every climate"" that Revolutionary republicans so successfully promoted. Instead, the War of Independence descended into a quagmire of anxiety, destruction, and distress at the hands of the American environment—a ""Diabolical Country,"" as one British soldier opined, ""which no Earthly Compensation can put me in Charity with.

The Revolutionary War is often celebrated as the marking the birth of American republicanism, liberty, and representative democracy. Yet for the tens of thousands of British and Hessian troops sent 3,000 miles across the Atlantic Ocean to wage war under alien skies, such a progressive picture, as Vaughn Scribner reveals, could not have been further from the truth. In Under Alien Skies , Scribner illustrates how foreign soldiers' negative perceptions of the American environment merged with harsh wartime realities to elicit considerable physical, mental, and emotional anguish. Whether trudging through alligator-infested swamps, nursing a comrade back to health in a rain-sodden tent, or digging trenches in a burned-out port city, most who fought in America under the British army's flag ultimately deemed themselves strangers fighting in a strange land. For them, Revolutionary America looked nothing like the ""happy land blessed with every climate"" that Revolutionary republicans so successfully promoted. Instead, the War of Independence descended into a quagmire of anxiety, destruction, and distress at the hands of the American environment—a ""Diabolical Country,"" as one British soldier opined, ""which no Earthly Compensation can put me in Charity with.

Examines the critical role of urban taverns in the social and political life of colonial and revolutionary America From exclusive "city taverns" to seedy "disorderly houses," urban taverns were wholly engrained in the diverse web of British American life. By the mid-eighteenth century, urban taverns emerged as the most popular, numerous, and accessible public spaces in British America. These shared spaces, which hosted individuals from a broad swath of socioeconomic backgrounds, eliminated the notion of "civilized" and "wild" individuals, and dismayed the elite colonists who hoped to impose a British-style social order upon their local community. More importantly, urban taverns served as critical arenas through which diverse colonists engaged in an ongoing act of societal negotiation. Inn Civility exhibits how colonists' struggles to emulate their British homeland ultimately impelled the creation of an American republic. This unique insight demonstrates the messy, often contradictory nature of British American society building. In striving to create a monarchical society based upon tenets of civility, order, and liberty, colonists inadvertently created a political society that the founders would rely upon for their visions of a republican America. The elitist colonists' futile efforts at realizing a civil society are crucial for understanding America's controversial beginnings and the fitful development of American republicanism.