Bøger udgivet af UNIV PR OF KANSAS

"From the first shot fired by his grandfather on a jungle trail in 1903 to the day his father captured plans for the Chinese invasion of South Korea, William Crawford Woods's family has found its way into several American wars. Drawing on letters, journals, and other artifacts and documents, Woods has retrieved their stories-accounts of his grandfather, Louis Crawford, who served in the Philippine War and in World War I; of the author's uncle, who rose from West Point cadet to staff command in the 11th Airborne and died in action in the World War II battle for Manila; and of the author's own father, who transformed himself from a sedentary lawyer into a soldier and a spy. To lighten the load, Woods occasionally calls on memories of his own army service, which he calls "brief, bloodless, and largely comic." The book is nonfiction fortified by dramatic scenes in which the author, drawing on his skills as a novelist, offers more than battlefield stories. He explores the wider impact of war, as we learn of his grandfather's struggles with his wife's patrician parents; his uncle's involvement with Cy Caldwell, a superstar aviator of the 1930s; and his father's swift ascent from civilian to counterspy"--

Few women have had a more significant impact on the development and growth of Lawrence, Kansas, and the University of Kansas than Elizabeth Miller Watkins. Elizabeth Josephine Miller was born in Ohio in 1861 and moved with her family to Lawrence when she was a child. She attended the University of Kansas's preparatory school in the 1870s but could not complete her education when a family financial crisis forced her to seek employment. She started working at the J. B. Watkins Land and Mortgage Company in 1887 as a secretary and in 1909 she married the company's founder and owner, Jabez Watkins. Together the Watkinses dedicated themselves to philanthropy and were committed to giving all their wealth, as Elizabeth said, "for the good of humanity, chiefly here in Lawrence." Jabez died in 1921, leaving Elizabeth to manage the family fortune alone.Elizabeth wished to give women the opportunity for higher education that she herself had never received. In 1925, the Kansas Board of Regents approved her request to have a women's scholarship hall built at KU. Watkins Hall, named in memory of her late husband, was constructed close to Elizabeth's home--now the chancellor's residence--and was followed a decade later by the construction of Miller Hall in 1936. As two of the twelve scholarship halls at the University of Kansas today, Watkins and Miller Halls are home to a vibrant cohort of young female scholars and an active alumnae community who continue the philanthropic vision of Elizabeth Miller Watkins.In 1929, Elizabeth donated $200,000 for the new Lawrence Memorial Hospital to be built at 3rd and Maine, where it remains today. She also established the first on-campus healthcare provider, Watkins Memorial Hospital, at the University of Kansas (now Twente Hall) in 1931.In this engaging biography, Mary Dresser Burchill and Norma Decker Hoagland's extensive research successfully paints a portrait of a remarkable woman whose generosity endures at KU and in Lawrence and brings to light the astonishing legacy of one of the city's leading philanthropists.

"While its national parks are widely viewed as "America's best idea," and are both popular and noncontroversial in the United States, the establishment and history of almost every national park has been characterized by conflict over competing claims to land, history, knowledge, and economic interests. American presidents stake their claims to environmentalism, their assertions of a singular national history, and their definitions of a unified national identity on the parks, and often do so inside the parks themselves. Like any major area of public policy, however, the fissures present in debates over the national parks also represent important fracture lines in the public understanding of the meaning of "America" and of individual claims to citizenship. The park system, in other words, does a lot of political work for both presidents and the mass public, even though much of that work goes largely unnoticed. This book explores that political work, focusing on national origins and the dispossession of Indigenous peoples, monuments to the national past, heritage and the assertion of a national narrative, environmentalism and natural resources, and the exploitation of the national landscape for economic gain"--

When Abraham Lincoln was sworn into office, seven slave states had preemptively seceded rather than recognize the legitimacy of his election. In his first inaugural address on March 4, 1861, Lincoln replied to the secessionists and set forth a principled defense of majority rule as "the only true sovereign of a free people." His immediate purpose was to argue against the legitimacy of a powerful minority forcibly partitioning the United States because it was dissatisfied with the results of a free, constitutionally conducted election. His wider purpose was to make the case that a deliberate, constitutionally checked majority, though by no means infallible, was the appropriate ultimate authority not only on routine political questions but even on the kind of difficult, deeply divisive questions--like the future of slavery--that could otherwise trigger violent contests.Sovereign of a Free People examines Lincoln's defense of majority rule, his understanding of its capabilities and limitations, and his hope that slavery could be peacefully and gradually extinguished through the action of a committed national majority. James Read argues that Lincoln offered an innovative account of the interplay between majorities and minorities in the context of crosscutting issues and shifting public opinion. This story is particularly timely today as a new minority of dissatisfied voters has threatened and enacted violence in response to a valid election.Read offers the first book focused on Lincoln's understanding of majority rule. He also highlights the similarities and differences between the threats to American democracy in Lincoln's time and in our own. Sovereign of a Free People challenges common assumptions about what caused the Civil War, takes seriously the alternative path of a peaceful, democratic abolition of slavery in the United States, and offers a fresh treatment of Lincoln and race.

"Thomas S. Foley, a Democratic representative from the traditionally Republican region of eastern Washington, served in Congress for thirty years, from 1964 to 1994. In 1989 he became the first Speaker of the US House of Representatives from a district west of Texas. His experience as a Democrat from a Republican district contributed to his strong commitment to bipartisanship and institution-building. His leadership came to an end with the Newt Gingrich-led Republican "revolution" that ushered in an era of ideological polarization and partisanship. Speaker Tom Foley is a political biography of this important but often ignored and overlooked figure in modern congressional history. In addition to examining the story of Foley's service as Speaker of the House, R. Kenton Bird and John C. Pierce address key themes that emerge from placing his career in the context of both his own life story and congressional politics in the late twentieth century. What emerges is the story of a leader whose strongly held political values motivated him to sustain a vibrant and responsive House of Representatives as an institution, but left him unsuited for the polarized and strident political environment that emerged in the early 1990s, a climate fueled by talk radio and other conservative media and successfully exploited by Gingrich and his fellow partisans. Though he was a reformed in the 1970s, by the 1990s he was seen as part of an "old guard" holding back the House from further reform. His defeat marked a seismic transition in the landscape of American politics"--