History Book List ·

Smugglers, Secessionists, and Loyal Citizens on the Ghana-Togo Frontier

The Life of the Borderlands since 1914

The first integrated history of the Ghana-Togo borderlands, Smugglers, Secessionists, and Loyal Citizens on the Ghana-Togo Frontier challenges the conventional wisdom that the current border is an arbitrary European construct, resisted by Ewe irredentism.…

Political Power in Pre-Colonial Buganda

Economy, Society, and Warfare in the Nineteenth Century

Blessed with fertile and well-watered soil, East Africa's kingdom of Buganda supported a relatively dense population and became a major regional power by the mid-nineteenth century. This complex and fascinating state has also long been in need of a thorough study that cuts through the image of autocracy and military might.…

Ohio on the Move

Transportation in the Buckeye State

Few American states can match the rich and diverse transportation heritage of Ohio. Every major form of public conveyance eventually served the Buckeye state. From the “Canal Age” to the “Interurban Era,” Ohio emerged as a national leader.…

A Modern History of the Somali

Nation and State in the Horn of Africa

This latest edition of A Modern History of the Somali brings I. M. Lewis's definitive history up to date and shows the amazing continuity of Somali forms of social organization. Lewis's history portrays the ingeniousness with which the Somali way of life has been adapted to all forms of modernity.…

Writing a Wider War

Rethinking Gender, Race, and Identity in the South African War, 1899–1902

A century after the South African War (1899-1902), historians are beginning to reevaluate the accepted wisdom regarding the scope of the war, its participants, and its impact. Writing a Wider War charts some of the changing historical constructions of the memorialization of suffering during the war.…

John Reed and the Writing of Revolution

John Reed (1887-1920) is best known as the author of Ten Days That Shook the World and as champion of the communist movement in the United States. Still, Reed remains a writer almost systematically ignored by the literary critical establishment, even if alternately vilified and lionized by historians and by films like Warren Beatty's Reds.…

Framing the Polish Home

Postwar Cultural Constructions of Hearth, Nation, and Self

As the subject of ideological, aesthetic, and existential manipulations, the Polish home and its representation is an ever-changing phenomenon that absorbs new tendencies and, at the same time, retains its centrality to Polish literature, whether written in Poland or abroad.…

Ohio Is My Dwelling Place

Schoolgirl Embroideries, 1800-1850

One of the most intriguing cultural artifacts of our nation's past was made by young girls—the embroidery sampler. In Ohio Is My Dwelling Place, American decorative arts expert Sue Studebaker documents the samplers created in Ohio prior to 1850, the girls who made them, their families, and the teachers who taught them to stitch.…

Pioneers of Change in Ethiopia

The Reformist Intellectuals of the Early Twentieth Century

In this exciting new study, Bahru Zewde, one of the foremost historians of modern Ethiopia, has constructed a collective biography of a remarkable group of men and women in a formative period of their country's history.…

Stepping Forward

Black Women in Africa and the Americas

A unique and important study, Stepping Forward examines the experiences of nineteenth- and twentieth-century black women in Africa and African diaspora communities from a variety of perspectives in a number of different settings.…

Creating Germans Abroad

Cultural Policies and National Identity in Namibia

When World War I brought an end to German colonial rule in Namibia, much of the German population stayed on. The German community, which had managed to deal with colonial administration, faced new challenges when the region became a South African mandate under the League of Nations in 1919.…

Potent Brews

A Social History of Alcohol in East Africa, 1850–1999

In this first general history of alcohol and drinking in East Africa, Justin Willis's central theme is power—from customary beliefs in alcohol as a symbol of authority and a means of enhancement and privilege, to the use of power in advertising, and discourse on the consumption of modern bottled beers and spirits.…

Southern Marches of Imperial Ethiopia

Essays in History and Social Anthropology

This pioneering book, first published to wide acclaim in 1986, traces the way the Ethiopian center and the peripheral regions of the country affected each other. It looks specifically at the expansion of the highland Ethiopian state into the western and southern lowlands from the 1890s up to 1974.…

An American Colony

Regionalism and the Roots of Midwestern Culture

The Old Northwest—the region now known as the Midwest—has been largely overlooked in American cultural history, represented as a place smoothly assimilated into the expanding, manifestly-destined nation.…

Taking Root

Narratives of Jewish Women in Latin America

In Taking Root, Latin American women of Jewish descent, from Mexico to Uruguay, recall their coming of age with Sabbath candles and Hebrew prayers, Ladino songs and merengue music, Queen Esther and the Virgin of Guadalupe.…

An Amulet of Greek Earth

Generations of Immigrant Folk Culture

The boys and men who left their Greek valley and mountain villages in the early 1900s for America came with amulets their mothers had made for them. Some were miniature sacks attached to a necklace; more often they were merely a square of fabric enclosing the values of their lives: a piece of a holy book or a sliver of the True Cross representing their belief in Greek Orthodoxy; a thyme leaf denoting their wild terrain; a blue bead to ward off the Evil Eye; and a pinch of Greek earth.…

The Collected Works of William Howard Taft, Volume IV

Presidential Messages to Congress

“A time when panics seem far removed is the best time to prepare our financial system to withstand a storm. The most crying need this country has is a proper banking and currency system. The existing one is inadequate, and everyone who has studied the question admits it.…

Flash Effect

Science and the Rhetorical Origins of Cold War America

The ways science and technology are portrayed in advertising, in the news, in our politics, and in the culture at large inform the way we respond to these particular facts of life. The better we are at recognizing the rhetorical intentions of the purveyors of information and promoters of mass culture, the more adept we become at responding intelligently to them.…

Remapping Ethiopia

Socialism & After

Governance everywhere is concerned with spatial relationships. Modern states “map” local communities, making them legible for the purposes of control. Ethiopia has gone through several stages of “mapping” in its imperial, revolutionary, and postrevolutionary phases.…

American Coverlets and Their Weavers

Coverlets from the Collection of Foster and Muriel McCarl

Coverlets woven in vibrant colors of red, blue, white, and green are as popular today as they were in the nineteenth century.American Coverlets and Their Weavers is a lavishly illustrated guide to one of the premier collections of coverlets in the nation.…