Bøger udgivet af University Press of Kansas

"The latest book by renowned legal historian William Nelson is about American judicial conservatism during the closing decades of the nineteenth century and the opening decades of the twentieth. It examines the subject, however, not by studying all jurisdictions but by focusing in detail on the work of judges in a single jurisdiction-New York-together with a glimpse at the work product of United States Supreme Court justices. Nelson's book challenges the received wisdom that conservative judges, along with much of the legal profession in the decades from 1860 to 1920, were on the side of big business and the rich. He finds another form of conservative jurisprudence on display in New York, where conservative judges reached decisions that were forward-looking and progressive in character with respect to business doctrine"--

The Indian Trade and Intercourse Act of 1834 represented what many considered the ongoing benevolence of the United States toward Native Americans, establishing a congressionally designated refuge for displaced Indians to protect them from exploitation by white men. Others came to see it as a legally sanctioned way to swindle them out of their land.This first book-length study of "Indian country" focuses on Section 1 of the 1834 Act-which established its boundaries-to show that this legislation was ineffectual from the beginning. William Unrau challenges conventional views that the act was a continuation of the government's benevolence toward Indians, revealing it instead as little more than a deceptive stopgap that facilitated white settlement and development of the trans-Missouri West.Encompassing more than half of the Louisiana Purchase and stretching from the Red River to the headwaters of the Missouri, Indian country was designated as a place for Native survival and improvement. Unrau shows that, although many consider that the territory merely fell victim to Manifest Destiny, the concept of Indian country was flawed from the start by such factors as distorted perceptions of the region's economic potential, tribal land compressions, government complicity in overland travel and commerce, and blatant disregard for federal regulations. Chronicling the encroachments of land-hungry whites, which met with little resistance from negligent if not complicit lawmakers and bureaucrats, he tells how the protection of Indian country lasted only until the needs of westward expansion outweighed those associated with the presumed solution to the "Indian problem" and how subsequent legislation negated the supposed permanence of Indian lands.When thousands of settlers began entering Kansas Territory in 1854, the government appeared powerless to protect Indians--even though it had been responsible for carving Kansas out of Indian country in the first place. Unrau's work shows that there has been a general misunderstanding of Indian country both then and now--that it was never more or less than what the white man said it was, not what the Indians were told or believed--and represents a significant chapter in the shameful history of America's treatment of Indians.

Why did it take so long for American law schools to start teaching about climate change? Although most environmental law professors were aware of climate change by 1990, it took nearly fifteen years for them to incorporate the topic into their curriculum. In her innovative new work, Kimberly K. Smith explores how American environmental law professors have addressed climate change, identifying the barriers they faced, how they overcame them, and how they created "climate law" as a domain of legal specialization.Making Climate Lawyers explores the history of why American law schools were resistant to teaching about climate change and how that changed over the course of a forty-year period, resulting in law schools across the country incorporating climate change into their curricula, with many even establishing centers on the environment. Smith challenges dominant explanations of why the United States was slow to develop climate policy: it wasn't just political opposition or short-sightedness. Creating climate legal professionals required changing the fundamentals of legal education.Based on dozens of interviews with faculty and students, Making Climate Lawyers fills a gap in the literature on the intellectual history of climate change, most of which focuses on the history of climate science. Smith focuses instead on how the climate problem fits (or doesn't fit) into the structure of American law. She uses this story as a lens through which to understand both the transformation of legal education since the 1980s and the nature of climate change as a policy problem.

Keeping the Republic is an eloquent defense of the American constitutional order and a response to its critics, including those who are estranged from the very idea of a fixed constitution in which "the living are governed by the dead." Dennis Hale and Marc Landy take seriously the criticisms of the United States Constitution. Before mounting their argument, they present an intellectual history of the key critics, including Thomas Paine, William Lloyd Garrison, Henry David Thoreau, Woodrow Wilson, Robert Dahl, Sanford Levinson, and the authors of The 1619 Project. Why, they ask, if the constitutional order is so well-designed, do so many American citizens have a negative view of the American political order? To address that question, they examine the most crucial episodes in American political development from the Founding to the present.Hale and Landy frame their defense of the Constitution by understanding America in terms of modernity, where small republics are no longer possible and there is a need to protect the citizens of a massive modern state while still preserving liberty. The Constitution makes large, popular government possible by placing effective limits on the exercise of power. The Constitution forces the people to be governed by the dead, both to pay the debt we owe to those who came before us and to preserve society for generations yet unborn.The central argument of Keeping the Republic is that the Constitution provides for a free government because it places effective limits on the exercise of power--an essential ingredient of any good government, even one that aims to be a popular government. That the people should rule is a given among republicans; that the people can do anything they want is a proposition that no one could accept with their eyes wide open. Thus, the limits that the Constitution place on American political life are not a problem, but a solution to a problem.Hale and Landy offer both a survey of American anti-constitutionalism and a powerful argument for maintaining the constitutional order of the nation's Framers.

Choice Outstanding TitleThroughout its existence, the Red Army was viewed as a formidable threat. By the end of the Cold War, however, it had become the weakest link in the Soviet Union's power structure. Always subordinate to the Communist Party, the military in 1991 suddenly found itself answering instead to the president of a democratic state. Dale Herspring closely examines how that relationship influenced the military's viability in the new Russian Federation.Herspring's book is the first to assess the relationship between the Russian military and the political leadership under Presidents Mikhail Gorbachev, Boris Yeltsin, and Vladimir Putin. He depicts an outmoded and demoralized military force still struggling to free itself from Cold War paradigms, while failing to confront not only debacles in Afghanistan and Chechnya but also a rise in crime and corruption within the ranks. He reveals how Gorbachev neglected the military to save Russia from internal collapse and Yeltsin reneged on continuing promises of support. And, while Putin claims a better understanding of the armed forces, he has severely tightened his control over the military while monitoring its struggle toward modernization.Herspring argues that presidential leadership--or a significant lack thereof--has been the key variable determining the kind of military Russia puts in the field. It has been up to the president to ensure that the high command makes a successful transition to the new polity--otherwise combat readiness will decline and generals and admirals could become politicized. By focusing on how the high command has reacted to each president's decisions and leadership style, Herspring shows that, in spite of the continued importance of the military's bureaucratic structure, personality factors have assumed a much more important role than in the past.The Kremlin and the High Command provides the most complete analysis to date of the Russian president's influence on the Russian officer corps, the soldiers they lead, and their army's combat readiness. Shedding light on the chaos that has plagued the USSR and Russia over the past 25 years, it also suggests how the often fraught relationship between the president and the high command must evolve if the Russian Federation is to evolve into a truly democratic nation.

Throughout the World War I era, the United States Marine Corps' efforts to promote their culture of manliness directed attention away from the dangers of war and military life and towards its potential benefits. As a military institution that valued physical, mental, and moral strength, the Marines created an alluring image for young men seeking a rite of passage into manhood. Within this context, the potential for danger and death only enhanced the appeal.Mark Ryland Folse's The Globe and Anchor Men offers the first in-depth history of masculinity in the Marine Corps during the World War I era. White manhood and manliness constituted the lens through which the Marines of this period saw themselves, how they wanted the public to see them, and what they believed they contributed to society. Their highly gendered culture helped foster positive public relations, allowing Marines to successfully promote the potential benefits of becoming a Marine over the costs, even in times of war.By examining how the Marine Corps' culture, public image, and esteem within U.S. society evolved, Folse demonstrates that the American people measured the Marines' usefulness not only in terms of military readiness but also according to standards of manliness set by popular culture and by Marines themselves. The Marines claimed to recruit the finest specimens of American manhood and make them even better: strong, brave, and morally upright. They claimed the Marine would be a man with a wealth of travel and experience behind him. He would be a proud and worthy citizen who had earned respect through his years of service, training, and struggle in the Marine Corps. Becoming a Marine benefited the man, and the new Marine benefited the nation. As men became manlier, the country did, too.

Jonathan Bartho's Whistling Dixie explores the interdependent political relationship between Ronald Reagan and the white conservative South, a relationship that had a profound impact on Reagan's own career, on the political landscape of the South and the entire United States, and on the identity of the modern Republican Party. Millions of southerners were attracted to the GOP by Reagan's anti-statist ideology and their affection for the man himself--an affection that had been built over decades of appearances in the region. The support of these white southern conservatives was crucial to Reagan's political success, ultimately propelling him to the White House in 1980. Conversely, by supporting Reagan's presidential campaigns, southern conservatives were able to influence the direction of the Republican Party and begin restoring their region to a position of power in Washington.Bartho deftly provides a new perspective on Reagan's political career and the Republican Party of the Reagan era while detailing the often-rancorous philosophical differences between Reaganism and southern conservatism and the resulting political conflicts. Whistling Dixie highlights a divide in the Republican Party and in American conservatism that has often been overlooked--a divide that laid the foundations for the GOP's southernization and ultimately led to the rise of Donald Trump.

Winner: Army Historical Foundation Award for Excellence in U.S. Army History Writing The modern US Army as we know it was largely created in the years between the two world wars. Prior to World War I, officers in leadership positions were increasingly convinced that building a new army could not take place as a series of random developments but was an enterprise that had to be guided by a distinct military policy that enjoyed the support of the nation. In 1920, Congress accepted that idea and embodied it in the National Defense Act. In doing so it also accepted army leadership's idea of entrusting America's security to a unique force, the Citizen Army, and tasked the nation's Regular Army with developing and training that force. Creating the Modern Army details the efforts of the Regular Army to do so in the face of austerity budgets and public apathy while simultaneously responding to the challenges posed by the new and revolutionary mechanization of warfare.In this book Woolley focuses on the development of what he sees as the four major features of the modernized army that emerged due to these efforts. These included the creation of the civilian components of the new army: the Citizen's Military Training Camps, the Officer Reserve Corps, the National Guard, and the Reserve Officer Training Corps; the development of the four major combat branches as the structural basis for organizing the army as well as creating the means to educate new officers and soldiers about their craft and to socialize them into an army culture; the creation of a rationalized and progressive system of professional military education; and the initial mechanization of the combat branches. Woolley also points out how the development of the army in this period was heavily influenced by policies and actions of the president and Congress.The US Army that fought World War II was clearly a citizen army whose leadership was largely trained within the framework of the institutions of the army created by the National Defense Act. The way that army fought the war may have been less decisive and more costly in terms of lives and money than it should have been. But that army won the war and therefore validated the citizen army as the US way of war.

This work is based on the author's PhD dissertation "Jefferson's Sons: Notes on the State of Virginia and Virginian Antislavery, 1760-1832."

This wry portrayal of academic life will delight anyone who has ever spent time on a college campus. Writing with lightly satirical, self-deprecating charm, Joel Gold covers topics ranging from academic conventions to motivating recalcitrant students, from grantsmanship to the IRS, from the follies and foibles of academics to sabbaticals and living overseas. Twenty-six tales are illustrated with caricatures that capture perfectly the diffident, bemused, often befuddled wayward professor.

The Man of the People traces the history of how the President became for most Americans the ultimate American: the exemplar of our collective national values, morals, and "character."

Someday, Candelaria Garcia said to the author, you will get all the stories. It was a tall order, in Magdalena, New Mexico, a once booming frontier town where Navajo, Anglo, and Hispanic people have lived in shifting, sometimes separate, sometimes overlapping worlds for well over a hundred years. But these were the stories, and this was the world, that David Wallace Adams set out to map, in a work that would capture the intimate, complex history of growing up in a Southwest borderland. At the intersection of memory, myth, and history, his book asks what it was like to be a child in a land of ethnic and cultural boundaries. The answer, as close to all the stories as one might hope to get, captures the diverse, ever-changing experience of a Southwest community defined by cultural bordersand the nature and role of children in defending and crossing those borders.In this book, we listen to the voices of elders who knew Magdalena nearly a century ago, and the voices of a younger generation who negotiated the communitys shifting boundaries. Their stories take us to sheep and cattle ranches, Navajo ceremonies, Hispanic fiestas, mining camps, First Communion classes, ranch house dances, Indian boarding school drill fields, high school social activities, and childrens rodeos. Here we learn how class, religion, language, and race influenced the creation of distinct identities and ethnic boundaries, but also provided opportunities for cross-cultural interactions and intimacies. And we see the critical importance of education, in both reinforcing differences and opening a shared space for those differences to be experienced and bridged. In this, Adamss work offers a close-up view of the transformation of one multicultural community, but also of the transformation of childhood itself over the course of the twentieth century.A unique blend of oral, social, and childhood history, Three Roads to Magdalena is a rare living document of conflict and accommodation across ethnic boundaries in our ever-evolving multicultural society.

Downhill skiing is a vital economic engine for many communities in the Rocky Mountain states, attracting 20 million skier days per season. Colorado is by far the most popular destination, with more than two dozen major ski resorts creating a thriving industry that adds billions to the state's coffers. But, many ask, at what costMichael Childers traces the rise of Colorado's ski industry alongside that of the burgeoning environmental movement, which sprang up in opposition to rampant commercial development on mountains that had been designated as public lands. Combining official ski resort figures, U.S. Forest Service documents, real estate and tourism records, wildlife data, newspaper articles, and public comments, Childers shows how what started as an innocent leisurely pursuit has morphed into a multi-billion dollar business that forever changed the landscape of Colorado and brought with it serious environmental consequences.This first environmental history of skiing in Colorado traces the recreation's rise in popularity as a way of examining major changes in public land management in the American West during the last century. As more people headed to Colorado's mountains in search of thrills on the slopes, the USFS quickly became overwhelmed by the demand and turned resort development over to the private sector. The result has been a decades-long battle between developers and environmentalists-with skiers and Colorado residents caught in the middle.Childers examines the history of the ski industry within Colorado throughout the twentieth century along with the challenges the industry's growth posed in balancing the private development of public lands and mounting environmental concerns over issues such as rural growth, wildlife management, and air and water pollution. He then traces the history of radical environmentalism back to the 1960s to show how it picked up momentum, culminating in the Earth Liberation Front's 1998 arson at Vail Ski Resort-which ended up doing more harm than good to the environmentalist cause by recasting the mega-resorts as victims and turning public opinion against all environmental activists in the area.As Americans weigh their desire for fresh powder against their concern for protecting unspoiled lands, Childers's book provides valuable food for thought. Colorado Powder Keg opens a new window on the history of skiing in the American West as it adds to the broader debate over the management and purpose of national forests.

The constitutional balance of war powers has shifted from Congress to the president over time. Today, presidents broadly define their constitutional authority as commander in chief. In the nineteenth century, however, Congress was the institution that claimed and defended expansive war powers authority. This discrepancy raises important questions: How, specifically, did Congress define the boundaries between presidential and congressional war powers in the early republic? Did that definition change, and if so, when, how, and why did it do so?Based on an original, comprehensive dataset of every congressional reference to the commander-in-chief clause from the Founding through 1917, Casey Dominguez's Commander in Chief systematically analyzes the authority that members of Congress ascribe to the president as commander in chief and the boundaries they put around that authority.Dominguez shows that for more than a century members of Congress defined the commander in chief's authority narrowly, similar to that of any high-ranking military officer. But in a wave of nationalism during the Spanish-American War, members of Congress began to argue that Congress owed deference to the commander in chief. They also tended to argue that a president of their own party should have broad war powers, while the powers of a president in the other party should be defined narrowly. Together, these two dynamics suggest that the conditions for presidentially dominated modern constitutional war powers were set at the turn of the twentieth century, far earlier than is often acknowledged.

"If there is debate on some of the finer points of Ulysses S. Grant's inland campaign, few dispute its brilliance and no one can argue with the results: Grant arrived victorious at the exact place he sought: the high ground east of Vicksburg where he had access to both the city and an open and unchallenged supply route via the Yazoo River to the north. It was the very ground Grant had wanted for months. He could finally begin the process of actually capturing Vicksburg. In the entire nine-month-long campaign, there was no more tension and drama than in these seventeen days when Grant's Army of the Tennessee marched through the wilds of Mississippi to victory after victory, tearing the heart out of the State of Mississippi and the Confederacy. This is the fifth and final of Tim's Vicksburg volumes to launch, but chronologically not the last in the five-volume series. It falls between Bayou Battles for Vicksburg (January 1 to April 30, 1863) and The Siege of Vicksburg (May 23 to July 4, 1863)"--

"Gathering its waters from the plains of Colorado, Kansas, and Nebraska, the Kaw is truly America's prairie river; the only one to arise entirely on the Great Plains and traverse all three major grasslands-shortgrass, mixed-grass, and tallgrass prairies. James Locklear's In the Country of the Kaw is a joyous exploration of the realm of the Kaw River, which stretches from the High Plains of Colorado to the Kansas City metropolitan area.The book's first section profiles geology, landforms, and the region's woodlands and grasslands. The second explores the rich biological diversity associated with the land and its inhabitants' remarkable adaptations to the environment and each other. The final section is a collection of stories of human interaction with the landscape, how nature has shaped culture and culture nature. Locklear finds "astonishments" at every turn. In the Country of the Kaw is also a call to seek the flourishing of the natural and human communities of the region. Locklear describes staggering, human-wrought environmental degradations, but also finds great hope in the resilience of Nature and the inspiring work of conservation, preservation, restoration, and renewal being accomplished by individuals and organizations throughout the region. Locklear's relationship with the country of the Kaw stretches from his childhood in Kansas City in the 1960s to his current professional life as a botanist working in the Great Plains. A half century of rambling and rooting around in this region has given him a deep awe and affection for its uniqueness and goodness, which he conveys to the reader on every page"--

When the Korean War broke out in 1950, the Marine Corps was ordered to deploy an air-ground brigade in less than ten days, even though no such brigade existed at the time. Assembled from the woefully understrength 1st Marine Division and 1st Marine Air Wing units, the Brigade shipped out only six days after activation, sailed directly to Korea, was in combat within ninety-six hours of landing and, despite these enormous handicaps and numerically superior enemy forces, won every one of its engagements and helped secure the Pusan Perimeter. Despite its remarkable achievements, the Brigade's history has largely been lost amid accounts of the sweeping operations that followed. Its real history has been replaced by myths that attribute its success to tough training, great conditioning, unit cohesion, and combat-experienced officers. None of which were true. T. X. Hammes now reveals the real story of the Brigade's success, prominently citing the Corps' crucial ability to maintain its ethos, culture, and combat effectiveness during the period between World War II and Korea, when its very existence was being challenged. By studying the Corps from 1945 to 1950, Hammes shows that it was indeed the culture of the Corps-a culture based on remembering its storied history and learning to face modern challenges-that was responsible for the Brigade's success. The Corps remembered the human factors that made it so successful in past wars, notably the ethos of never leaving another marine behind. At the same time, the Corps demonstrated commendable flexibility in adapting its doctrine and operations to evolutions in modern warfare. In particular, the Corps overcame the air-ground schism that marked the end of World War II to excel at close air support. Despite massive budget and manpower cuts, the Corps continued to experiment and learn even at it clung to its historical lodestones. This approach was validated during the Brigade's trial by fire. More than a mere battle history, Forgotten Warriors gets to the heart of marine culture to show fighting forces have to both remember and learn. As today's armed forces face similar challenges, this book confirms that culture as much as technology prepares America's fighting men and women to answer their country's call.

An account of the link between Locke's thought and the American Founding. The author argues that previous writers have misread Locke's influence on the Founders: he portrays the philosopher as a moderate 17th-century moralist advocating an individualism that fits well with classic republicanism.

Whether you're purchasing groceries with your Safeway "club card" or casting a vote on American Idol, that data is being collected. From Amazon to iTunes, cell phones to GPS devices, Google to TiVo-all of these products and services give us an expansive sense of choice, access, and participation. But, in an era now marked by large-scale NSA operations that secretly monitor our email exchanges and internet surfing, Mark Andrejevic shows how these new technologies are increasingly employed as modes of surveillance and control. Many contend that our proliferating interactive media empower individuals and democratize society. But, Andrejevic asks, at what cost? In iSpy, he reveals that these and other highly touted benefits are accompanied by hidden risks and potential threats that tend to be ignored by mainstream society. His book offers the first sustained critique of a concept that has been a talking point for twenty years, an up-to-the-minute survey of interactivity across multiple media platforms. It debunks the false promises of the digital revolution still touted by the popular media while seeking to rehabilitate, rather than simply write off, the potentially democratic uses of interactive media. Andrejevic opens up the world of digital rights management and the data trail each of us leaves-data about our locations, preferences, or life events that are already put to use in various economic, political, and social contexts. He notes that, while citizens are becoming increasingly transparent to private and public monitoring agencies, they themselves are unable to access the information gathered about them-or know whether it's even correct. (The watchmen, it seems, don't want to be watched.) He also considers the appropriation of consumer marketing for political campaigns in targeting voters, and also examines the implications of the Internet for the so-called War on Terror. In iSpy, Andrejevic poses real challenges for our digital future. Amazingly detailed, compellingly readable, it warns that we need to temper our enthusiasm for these technologies with a better understanding of the threats they pose-to be able to distinguish between interactivity as centralized control and as collaborative participation.