Bøger udgivet af University of Oklahoma Press

In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Indigenous peoples of the Great Plains practiced an archival art--narrating war exploits in large-scale paintings executed on animal hide robes, shirts, tipi covers, and tipi liners. Essentially autobiographical, the paintings were worn and lived in by the men whose war exploits they portrayed, and were made to be "read" by the public at large. Executed in a pictorial narrative style and documenting actual events, these paintings blend visual art and history. Indigenous War Painting of the Plains is the first comprehensive look at this important North American art form, covering the full corpus of war paintings from fourteen tribes across the plains. Two impediments have previously made such a book impractical: photography alone falls short of rendering war paintings for the printed page, and only about half of the surviving works have reliable documentation on their cultural origins. Arni Brownstone surmounts these difficulties by producing precise electronic redrawings and by using well-documented paintings to inform poorly documented examples, bolstered by a careful examination of collection histories. Featuring some 300 photographs and electronic redrawings, the book focuses on 83 paintings organized into four chapters covering the paintings of tribes associated with a specific geographical sphere of artistic influence. Four appendixes feature paintings combined with "translations" by Indigenous collaborators who had intimate knowledge of the depicted events. Offering vivid access to the key works of war painting preserved in 37 museums throughout North America and Europe, Indigenous War Painting of the Plains illuminates distinctions between painting styles of different tribes, reveals how they influenced one another and changed over time, and conveys a deep understanding of how war painting developed in relation to profound social changes in Plains Indian cultures.

In Handmaid to Divinity, Desiree Hellegers establishes seventeenth-century poetry as a critical resource for understanding the debates about natural philosophy, astronomy, and medicine during the Scientific Revolution. Hellegers provides important insights into seventeenth-century responses to the emergent discourses of western science and into the cultural roots of the current environmental crisis.Drawing on recent cultural and feminist critiques of science, Hellegers offers finely nuanced readings of John Donne's Anniversaries, John Milton's Paradise Lost, and Anne Finch's The Spleen.

A year after John Bradstreet's raid of 1758-the first and largest British-American riverine raid mounted during the Seven Years' War (known in North America as the French and Indian War)-Benjamin Franklin hailed it as one of the great "American" victories of the war. Bradstreet heartily agreed, and soon enough, his own official account was adopted by Francis Parkman and other early historians.In this first comprehensive analysis of Bradstreet's raid, Ian Macpherson McCulloch uses never-before-seen materials and a new interpretive approach to dispel many of the myths that have grown up around the operation. The result is a closely observed, deeply researched revisionist microhistory-the first unvarnished, balanced account of a critical moment in early American military history.Examined within the context of campaign planning and the friction among commanders in the war's first three years, the raid looks markedly different than Bradstreet's heroic portrayal. The operation was carried out principally by American colonial soldiers, and McCulloch lets many of the provincial participants give voice to their own experiences. He consults little-known French documents that give Bradstreet's opponents' side of the story, as well as supporting material such as orders of battle, meteorological data, and overviews of captured ships. McCulloch also examines the riverine operational capability that Bradstreet put in place, a new water-borne style of combat that the British-American army would soon successfully deploy in the campaigns of Niagara (1759) and Montreal (1760).McCulloch's history is the most detailed, thoroughgoing view of Bradstreet's raid ever produced.

The story of the United States Air Force stretches back to aerial operations prior to the First World War-well before the USAF became a separate service-and looks forward to a new era of air power in space. Fighting from Above presents a concise account of this expansive history, offering a new perspective on how the air forces of the United States created an independent way of warfare over time.From the earliest battles of the USAF's predecessor organizations to its modern incarnation, Brian D. Laslie identifies four distinct and observable ways of war that developed over four distinct epochs. Beginning with the development of early air power (1906-1941), he highlights the creation of roles and missions, with bombardment theory and practice ascendant. An era of strategic dominance (1942-1975) followed, in which the ideas of strategic bombardment ruled the United States Air Force; when such notions were unceremoniously proven false during the Vietnam-era conflicts, a period of tactical ascendancy (1975-2019) began. Finally, Laslie considers the current environment, where much of the story of the USAF remains unwritten, as we are still grappling with the challenges posed by an unmanned future with drones and realization of the promises of a final frontier.While detailing combat operations, Fighting from Above also pays close attention to technology, politics, rivalries, logistics, policy, organization, equipping, and training. Thorough, concise, and innovative in its approach, it is an authoritative, exceptionally readable history of the development of American air power.

Born in 1888 in Oklahoma Territory, Jim Thorpe was a Sac and Fox Indian. In 1912 he participated in the Olympic Games in Stockholm, winning both the decathlon and pentathlon. It was then that King Gustav V of Sweden dubbed him "the world's greatest athlete."

Before their forced removal to Oklahoma in the 1830s, the Euchee people lived in Georgia and other southeastern territories. Today the Euchees are enrolled members of the Muscogee Nation of Oklahoma, but they possess their own separate language, culture, and traditions. This unique collection, written by Euchee citizen Gregory H. Bigler, combines traditional di'ile (Euchee tales), personal recollections, and contemporary stories to portray a way of life often hidden from view.Written in an engaging, down-to-earth style, the stories in this book immerse the reader in the everyday experiences of the Euchee community. With his gift for storytelling, Bigler welcomes readers into the lives and culture of the people whose stories he has heard or observed throughout his life and career as a lawyer and judge. Unforgettable characters appear or reappear in various settings, and these figures, whether animal or human, are bound to bring forth a chuckle or leave the reader wanting to learn more about their history. Some of the tales address serious legal injustices, while others poke gentle fun at lofty academic constructs. In the title story, for example, the mischievous character Shajwane (Rabbit), resolves to decolonize the forest, to strip away its "false narrative," by literally removing all new growth from the trees.These stories bring to life Euchee traditions that include family ties, the stomp dance, and communal cooking and feasting. Woven throughout is the sacred element of spirit. As Bigler explains in his introduction, the "spiritual" for Euchees does not signify a Western quest for peace or centeredness but instead a world filled with animate spirits that interact with all of us-as we see them, feel them, or seek them out.The Euchee people are unknown to most Americans. They inhabit a small area of northeastern Oklahoma and have yet to receive federal recognition. Yet even in their modern-day lives-as these stories capture so beautifully-the Euchee people remain fiercely determined to show "they are still here."

Loren Miller: Civil Rights Attorney and Journalist recovers this remarkable figure from the shadows of history and for the first time fully reveals his life for what it was: an extraordinary American story and a critical chapter in the annals of racial justice.

Texas has a history of producing nationally prominent leaders. It is also important for its burgeoning population and its natural resources. Few can argue that its politics are not fascinating. The years from 1938 to 1957 were the most primitive period of rule by the Texas Establishment, a loosely knit plutocracy of the Anglo upper classes answering only to the vested interests in banking, oil, land development, law, the merchant houses, and the press. Establishment rule was reflected in numerous and harsh antilabor laws, the suppression of academic freedom, a segregationist philosophy, elections marred by demagoguery and corruption, the devolution of the daily press, and a state government that offered its citizens, especially minorities, very few services. Important elements in the contemporary political scene originated between 1938 and 1957.

When war broke out between Great Britain and the United States in 1812, Sir George Prevost, captain general and governor in chief of British North America, was responsible for defending a group of North American colonies that stretched as far as the distance from Paris to Moscow. He also commanded one of the largest British overseas forces during the Napoleonic Wars. Defender of Canada, the first book-length examination of Prevost's career, offers a reinterpretation of the general's military leadership in the War of 1812. Historian Tanya Grodzinski shows that Prevost deserves far greater credit for the successful defense of Canada than he has heretofore received.Earlier accounts portrayed Prevost as overly cautious and attributed the preservation of Canada to other officers, but Grodzinski challenges these assumptions and restores the general to his rightful place as British North America's key military figure during the War of 1812. Grodzinski shows that Prevost's strategic insight enabled him to enact a practicable defense despite scarce resources and to ably integrate naval power into his defensive plans.Prevost's range of responsibilities in British North America were daunting. They included overseeing joint endeavors with Indian allies, managing logistical matters, monitoring naval construction and personnel needs, supervising colonial governments, and commanding the defense of Canada. Tasked with protecting an extensive and complex territory, Prevost employed a mix of soldiers, sailors, locally raised forces, and indigenous people in taking advantage of the American military's weaknesses to defeat most of its plans.Following his recall to Britain in 1815 after the defeat at the Battle of Plattsburgh, Prevost would have been court-martialed had he not died unexpectedly. In carefully examining the charges leveled against Prevost, Grodzinski shows the general to have preserved the integrity of Canada, allowing diplomats to ensure its continued existence.

In two decades of traveling throughout Mexico, Central America, and Europe, French priest Charles Étienne Brasseur de Bourbourg (1814-1874) amassed hundreds of indigenous manuscripts and printed books, including grammars and vocabularies that brought to light languages and cultures little known at the time. Although his efforts yielded many of the foundational texts of Mesoamerican studies-the pre-Columbian Codex Troana, the only known copies of the Popol Vuh and the indigenous dance drama Rabinal-Achi, and Diego De Landa's Relación de la cosas de Yucatán-Brasseur earned disdain among scholars for his theories linking Maya writings to the mythical continent of Atlantis. In The Manuscript Hunter, translator Katia Sainson reasserts his standing as the founder of modern Maya studies, presenting three of his travel writings in English for the first time.While civil wars raged throughout Mexico and Central America and foreign interests sought access to the region's rich resources, Brasseur focused on uncovering Mesoamerica's mysterious past by examining its ancient manuscripts and living oral traditions. His "Notes from a Voyage in Central America," "From Guatemala City to Rabinal," and Voyage across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec document his travels in search of these texts and traditions. Brasseur's writings weave vivid geographical descriptions of Central America and Mexico during the mid-1800s with keen social and political analysis, all steeped in vast knowledge of the region's history and interest in its indigenous cultures.Coupled with Sainson's thoughtful introduction and annotations, these captivating, accessible accounts reveal Brasseur de Bourbourg's true accomplishments and offer an unrivaled view of the birth of Mesoamerican studies in the nineteenth century. Brasseur's writings not only depict Central America and Mexico through the eyes of a European traveler at a key moment, but also illuminate the remarkable efforts of one man to understand and preserve Mesoamerica's cultural traditions for all time.

More than any other pioneer of the genre, Owen Wister turned the Western into a form of social and political critique. In this biographical-literary account of Wister's life and writings, Gary Scharnhorst shows how the West shaped Wister's career and ideas, even as he lived and worked in the East.

The predecessor of today's California bubbly was Eclipse Champagne, the first commercially successful California sparkling wine, produced by Arpad Haraszthy. In A Toast to Eclipse, Brian McGinty offers a definitive history of the wine, exploring California's winemaking past and two of the people who put the state's varietal wines on the map.

As the Klondike gold rush peaked in spring 1898, adventurers and gamblers rubbed shoulders with town-builders and gold-panners in Skagway, Alaska. The flow of riches lured confidence men, too-among them Jefferson Randolph "Soapy" Smith (1860-98), who with an entourage of "bunco-men" conned and robbed the stampeders. Soapy, though, a common enough criminal, would go down in legend as the Robin Hood of Alaska, the "uncrowned king of Skagway," remembered for his charm and generosity, even for calming a lynch mob. When the Fourth of July was celebrated in '98, he supposedly led the parade. Then, a few days later, he was dead, killed in a shootout over a card game.With Smith's death, Skagway rid itself of crime forever. Or at least, so the story goes. Journalists immediately cast him as a martyr whose death redeemed a violent town. In fact, he was just a petty criminal and card shark, as Catherine Holder Spude proves definitively in "That Fiend in Hell": Soapy Smith in Legend, a tour de force of historical debunking that documents Smith's elevation to western hero. In sorting out the facts about this man and his death from fiction, Spude concludes that the actual Soapy was not the legendary "boss of Skagway," nor was he killed by Frank Reid, as early historians supposed. She shows that even eyewitnesses who knew the truth later changed their stories to fit the myth.But why? Tracking down some hundred retellings of the Soapy Smith story, Spude traces the efforts of Skagway's boosters to reinforce a morality tale at the expense of a complex story of town-building and government formation. The idea that Smith's death had made a lawless town safe served Skagway's economic interests. Spude's engaging deconstruction of Soapy's story models deep research and skepticism crucial to understanding the history of the American frontier.