August 2023 MBR The American History Shelf

The American History Shelf

The New Civil Rights Movement Reader
Traci Parker, editor
Marcia Walker-McWilliams, editor
University of Massachusetts Press
https://www.umasspress.com
9781625346896, $36.95, PB, 600pp

https://www.amazon.com/New-Civil-Rights-Movement-Reader/dp/1625346891

Synopsis: In the United States, the fight to secure full civil rights for African American people has endured for centuries. The movement has included many voices, among them, working people, charismatic activists, musicians and artists, the LGBTQIA community, veterans, suburbanites, and elected officials.

Moving from the labor struggles of the 1930s to the sit-ins and boycotts of midcentury, and the Black Lives Matter protests of today, "The New Civil Rights Movement Reader: Resistance, Resilience, and Justice" is an expansive volume that brings together first-person accounts, political documents and speeches, and historical photographs from each region of the country.

Designed for use in college and university courses and also engaging for the non-specialist general reader, "The New Civil Rights Movement Reader" is new compilation is the most diverse, most inclusive, and most comprehensive resource available for teaching and learning about the civil rights movement.

With chronological and geographical depth, "The New Civil Rights Movement Reader" directly addresses a range of key topics, including youth activism, regional and local freedom struggles, voting rights, economic inequality, gender, sexuality, and culture, and the movement's global

Critique: Collaboratively compiled and co-edited by academicians Traci Parker and Marcia Walker-McWilliams, "The New Civil Rights Movement Reader: Resistance, Resilience, and Justice" is an impressive, high value, and unreservedly recommended addition to personal, professional, community, college, and university library American History and Race Relations collections, as well as supplemental African-American History curriculum studies lists. It should be noted for students, academia, historian, political activists, and non-specialist general readers with an interest in the subject that "The New Civil Rights Movement Reader: Resistance, Resilience, and Justice" is also available in a digital book format (Kindle, $30.99).

Editorial Note #1: Traci Parker (https://traciparker.com) is associate professor of Afro-American studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and author of Department Stores and the Black Freedom Movement: Workers, Consumers, and Civil Rights from the 1930s to the 1980s.

Editorial Note #2: Marcia Walker-McWilliams ((https://www.linkedin.com/in/marciaphd)) is executive director of the Black Metropolis Research Consortium and author of Reverend Addie Wyatt: Faith and the Fight for Labor, Gender, and Racial Equality.

Settling Ohio: First Peoples and Beyond
Timothy G. Anderson, editor
Brian Schoen, editor
Ohio University Press
215 Columbus Road, Suite 101, Athens, OH 45701
www.ohioswallow.com
9780821425268, $55.00, HC, 292pp

https://www.amazon.com/Settling-Ohio-Peoples-Approaches-Midwestern/dp/0821425269

Synopsis: The Ohio Valley possesses some of the most resource-rich terrain in the world. Its settlement by humans was thus consequential not only for shaping the geographic and cultural landscape of the region but also for forming the United States and impacting the future of world history.

Collaboratively compiled and co-edited by academicians and historians Timothy G. Anderson and Brian Schoen, "Settling Ohio: First Peoples and Beyond", begins with an overview of the first people who inhabited the region, who built civilizations that moved massive amounts of earth and left an archaeological record that drew the interest of subsequent settlers and continues to intrigue scholars. It highlights how, in the eighteenth century, Native Americans who migrated from the East and North interacted with Europeans to develop impressive trading networks and how they navigated complicated wars and sought to preserve national identities in the face of violent attempts to remove them from their lands.

The contributors to "Settling Ohio" situates the traditional story of Ohio settlement, including the Northwest Ordinance, the dealings of the Ohio Company of Associates, and early road building, into a far richer story of contested spaces, competing visions of nationhood, and complicated relations with Indian peoples. By so doing, they provide valuable new insights into how chaotic and contingent early national politics and frontier development truly were.

Chapters highlighting the role of apple-growing culture, education, African American settlers, and the diverse migration flows into Ohio from the East and Europe further demonstrate the complex multiethnic composition of Ohio's early settlements and the tensions that resulted.

A final theme of "Settling Ohio" is the desirability of working to recover the often-forgotten history of non-White peoples displaced by the processes of settler colonialism that has been, until recently, undervalued in the scholarship.

Critique: With its twelve chapters deftly organized into three major sections (First Nation; American Foundations; Alternate Histories), and featuring a sixteen page Appendix, a six page listing of the contributors and their credentials, and a nine page Index, "Settling Ohio: First Peoples and Beyond" is an impressive work of seminal scholarship and an unreservedly recommended addition to personal, community, and academic library American History collections and supplemental curriculum studies lists. It should be noted for students, academia, and non-specialist general readers with an interest in the subject that "Settling Ohio: First Peoples and Beyond" is also available in a paperback edition (9780821425275, $28.95) and in a digital book format (Kindle, $15.65).

Editorial Note #1: Timothy G. Anderson (https://www.ohio.edu/cas/anderst1) is an historical geographer and is an Associate Professor of Geography at Ohio University.

Editorial Note #2: Brian Schoen (https://www.ohio.edu/cas/schoen) is the chair of the Department of History and the James Richard Hamilton/Baker & Hostetler Distinguished Professor of Teaching in the Humanities at Ohio University. He is the author of The Fragile Fabric of Union: Cotton, Federal Politics, and the Global Origins of the Civil War and has co-edited three other collections.

To the Last Extremity
Mark Maloy
Savas Beatie
PO Box 4527, El Dorado Hills, CA 95762
www.savasbeatie.com
9781611216431, $16.95, PB, 192pp

https://www.amazon.com/Last-Extremity-Charleston-1776-1782-Revolutionary/dp/1611216435

Synopsis: June 1776: Just a month before America declared its independence from Great Britain, a British fleet of warships and thousands of British soldiers appeared off the coast of Charleston, South Carolina. After a day-long battle, the most powerful navy in the world was bloodily repulsed by the Americans.

In the spring of 1779, a British force brazenly marched from Savannah to Charleston and tested the city's defenses before falling back. Finally, in the spring of 1780, a large British force returned to Charleston and laid siege to the city. The result was the worst American defeat of the Revolutionary War for the Americans, which cost them the city and an entire army of nearly 6,000 men. The citizens and soldiers suffered more than two years of occupation and imprisonment.

However, the siege of Charleston also marked the beginning of the end of the war. The fall of Charleston initiated a series of events that resulted in the American victory at Yorktown and the successful independence of the colonies.

South Carolina's historic port city is one of the most beautiful and historic in the United States. Numerous sites, battlefields, and buildings from this period still exist. In "To the Last Extremity: The Battles for Charleston, 1776-1782", historian Mark Maloy not only recounts the Revolutionary War history of Charleston, but takes you to the places where these events occurred.

Through it all, brave patriots were willing to defend the city and their liberty "to the last extremity."

Critique: Armchair historians and students of the American Revolution will enjoy "To the Last Extremity: The Battles for Charleston, 1776-1782", a true story outnumbered patriots forcing back the most powerful navy in the world at that time -- and where soldiers of the American Revolution bravely defended the city in 1779 and 1780, and where thousands suffered under occupation. While highly recommended for school and community library American Revolution History collections, it should be noted for personal reading lists that "To the Last Extremity: The Battles for Charleston, 1776-1782" is also available in a digital book format (Kindle, $8.99).

Editorial Note: Mark Maloy (https://www.battlefields.org/contributors/mark-maloy) is an historian and currently works for the National Park Service in Virginia. He holds an undergraduate degree in History from the College of William and Mary and a graduate degree in History from George Mason University. He has worked at numerous public historic sites and archaeological digs for the past fifteen years. He is also a Revolutionary War reenactor.

A Maritime History of the American Revolutionary War
Theodore Corbett
Pen & Sword Books
https://www.penandswordbooks.com
c/o Casemate (US distribution)
www.casematepublishers.com
9781399040419, $34.95, HC, 280pp

https://www.amazon.com/Maritime-History-American-Revolutionary-Atlantic-Wide/dp/1399040413

Synopsis: While many books have been written on the naval history of the Revolution, "A Maritime History of the American Revolutionary War: An Atlantic-Wide Conflict over Independence and Empire" by independent scholar Theodore Corbett is one of the first to treat it in its entirety as an Atlantic-wide conflict.

While its geographical scope is vast, this seminal study features overlooked aspects of the war in which sloops and barges fought, actions which proved to be as decisive as the familiar ship of the line confrontations.

This is also history from the bottom up, emphasizing the role of the crew as much the not always heroic officers.

From naval perspective the rebellious colonies did not gain a military victory, though Benjamin Franklin was able to secure their independence at the peace table in Europe. The final chapter of "A Maritime History of the American Revolutionary War" is on the Royal Navy's evacuation of white and black loyalists.

Critique: A original, meticulous, detailed, documented, and fascinating historical study, "A Maritime History of the American Revolutionary War: An Atlantic-Wide Conflict over Independence and Empire" is informatively enhanced for the reader with the inclusion of a section of b/w plates, thirty-eight pages of Notes, and a four page Index. A work of throughly impressive scholarship that is thoroughly 'reader friendly' in organization and presentation, (and also available in a digital book format (Kindle, $12.99), "A Maritime History of the American Revolutionary War: An Atlantic-Wide Conflict" is highly recommended as a core addition to personal, professional, community, college, and university library American Revolutionary History collections and supplemental curriculum studies lists.

Editorial Note: Theodore Corbett (https://www.pen-and-sword.co.uk/Theodore-Corbett/a/4970) is a scholar of the American Revolutionary War, an interest which grew during a career in teaching at several universities. He has published the award-winning No Turning Point, The Saratoga Campaign in Perspective and two community studies of the war, Revolutionary New Castle and Revolutionary Chestertown. For this maritime history, he has done research at the Caird Library, National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, Archives Centre, The Maritime Museum of Liverpool and the New York Historical Society as a Gilder Lehrman Fellow.

The Schlager Anthology of Hispanic America
Edited by Aaron E. Sanchez
Schlager Group Inc.
https://www.schlagergroup.com
9781935306849, $285.00 print/$260.00 ebook

https://www.schlagergroup.com/9781935306849/the-schlager-anthology-of-hispanic-america/

Libraries interested in acquiring a definitive reference to primary resource materials in Hispanic American history will find The Schlager Anthology of Hispanic America: A Student's Guide to Essential Primary Sources an essential acquisition. This book contains two volumes and chapters that move from pre-contact 1100s America to modern times, and is the sixth volume in the "Schlager Anthologies for Students" series.

Its focus is on exploring and exposing materials "from often-marginalized communities and voices that are frequently ignored in other anthologies and historical accounts." Each chapter provides an introductory history before delving into the source materials and references of overviews of primary source material documents (articles, writings, websites) and their place in Hispanic history. The abridgements of their contents and bibliographic connections allow researchers from high school to college and general-interest audiences to pursue more of the history on their own.

The 150 documents and accompanying commentary are accented by more than 100 photographs and illustrations that add colorful visuals of art and vintage embellishment to the articles and overviews. Glossaries, chapter questions for student consideration, and roundups of associated documents and themes both enhance and enlarge the subjects profiled in this wide-reaching anthology of social, political, historical, and even literary works.

One might anticipate that the depth of this coverage would impart a scholarly tone over a lively discourse, but one of the strengths of this collection is its surprising ability to remain informative, authoritative, yet thoroughly engrossing and relevant to everyday readers.

With over six hundred pages packed with essential and rare references, The Schlager Anthology of Hispanic America: A Student's Guide to Essential Primary Sources should not only be considered a foundation reference for any library interested in Hispanic topics and history, but a resource for broadening and expanding the subjects, nature, and focuses of Latino challenges and concerns throughout American literature, history, and society.

Its essential and rare opportunities for discussions and enlightenment also make The Schlager Anthology of Hispanic America: A Student's Guide to Essential Primary Sources a strong recommendation for discussion groups interested in pursing a range of Hispanic history topics. The questions at each chapter's end encourage debate: "Badillo states, 'Workfare was anathema to Democrats, but not to me.' How does this reflect his own personal and political journey? Does it also reflect the political journey of other Latinx people? Explain."

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