Bøger udgivet af University of Oklahoma Press

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."

This timely study of how the Supreme Court building shapes Washington as a space and a place for political action and meaning yields a multidimensional view, and a deeper appreciation, of the ways that our physical surroundings manifest who we are as a people, and what we value as a society.

When the Vietnam War punctured the myth of American military invincibility, Hollywood needed a new kind of war movie. The familiar triumphal narrative was relegated to history and, with it, the heroic legacy that had passed from one generation to the next for more than two hundred years.How Hollywood helped create and instill the American myth of heroic continuity, and how films revised that myth after the Vietnam War, is what Armando José Prats explores in Hollywood's Imperial Wars. The book offers a new way of understanding the cultural and historical significance of Vietnam in relation to Hollywood's earlier representations of Americans at war, from the mythic heroism of a film like Sands of Iwo Jima to the rupture of that myth in films such as The Deer Hunter, Apocalypse Now, and Platoon.As early as the mid-1940s, Prats suggests, fears aroused by the Cold War were stirring anxieties about sustaining the heroic myth-anxieties reflected in the insistent, aggressive patriotism in films of the period. In this context, Prats considers the immeasurable cultural importance of John Wayne, the cinematic apotheosis of wartime valor and righteousness, whose patriotism was nonetheless deeply compromised by his not having served in World War II. Prats reveals how historical and cultural anxieties emerge in well-known Vietnam movies, in which characters inspired by the heroes of the Second World War are denied the heroic legacy of their fathers. American war movies, in Prats's analysis, were forever altered by the loss in Vietnam. Even movies like American Sniper that exalt war heroes are marked as much by the failure of the heroic tropes of old Hollywood war movies as by the tragic turn of actual historical events.Tracing what Prats calls the "anxiety of legacy" through the films of the World War II and post-Vietnam War periods, this book offers a new way of looking at both the Hollywood war movie and the profound cultural shifts it reflects and refracts.

"A dual biography of George Harrison and Muhammad Ali, two complex icons of the 1960s, culminating in 1974, when both men reemerged in their respective professions. These men displayed that tenacity of the rebellious spirit of a vanishing era that challenged the cultural and political hegemony of the West and American military dominance"---

As the United States once again finds itself embroiled in heated disputes over women's bodily autonomy--disputes in which adoption plays a central role--Wellington's book offers a unique and much-needed frame of reference.

"Part travelogue, part field guide, part history, this book documents the rise and fall of one hundred Oklahoma towns, from the arrival of pioneers and settlers to the rise of buildings and businesses to the decline that came with natural disasters, manmade crises, and cultural change. The towns are described using maps, GPS coordinates, and almost two hundred historic and contemporary photos"--

The California gold rush of 1849 created fortunes for San Francisco merchants, whose wealth depended on control of the city's docks. But ownership of waterfront property was hotly contested. In an 1856 dispute over land titles, a county official shot an outspoken newspaperman, prompting a group of merchants to organize the San Francisco Committee of Vigilance. The committee, which met in secret, fed biased stories to the newspapers, depicting itself as a necessary substitute for incompetent law enforcement. But its actual purpose was quite different. In Dirty Deeds, historian Nancy J. Taniguchi draws on the 1856 Committee's minutes--long lost until she unearthed them--to present the first clear picture of its actions and motivations. San Francisco's real estate comprised a patchwork of land grants left from the Spanish and Mexican governments--grants that had been appropriated and sold over and over. Even after the establishment of a federal board in 1851 to settle the complicated California claims, land titles remained confused, and most of the land in the city belonged to no one. The acquisition of key waterfront properties in San Francisco by an ambitious politician motivated the thirty-odd merchants who called themselves "the Executives" of the Vigilance Committee to go directly after these parcels. Despite the organization's assertion of working on behalf of law and order, its tactics--kidnapping, forced deportations, and even murder--went far beyond the bounds of law. For more than a century, scholars have accepted the vigilantes' self-serving claims to honorable motives. Dirty Deeds tells the real story, in which a band of men took over a city in an attempt to control the most valuable land on the West Coast. Ranging far beyond San Francisco, the 1856 Vigilance Committee's activities affected events on the East Coast, in Central America, and in courts throughout the United States even after the Civil War.

The history of indigenous peoples in North America is long and complex. Many scholarly accounts now rely on statistical data to reconstruct this past, but amid all the facts and figures, it is easy to lose sight of the human side of the story. How did Native people express their thoughts and feelings, and what sources of strength did they rely on to persevere through centuries of change? In this engaging narrative, acclaimed historian R. David Edmunds combines careful research with creative storytelling to give voice to indigenous individuals and families and to illustrate the impact of pivotal events on their lives. A nonfiction account accompanies each narrative to provide necessary historical and cultural context. Voices in the Drum features nine stories, each of which focuses on a fictional character who is a composite, or representation, of historical people. This series of portrayals takes the reader on an epic journey through time, beginning in the early 1400s with the Mound Builder cultures and ending with the modern-day urbanization of Native people. Along the way, we observe fictional characters interacting with real historical figures, such as Anthony Wayne, Tecumseh, and John Sutter, and taking part in actual events, such as the Battle of Fallen Timbers, the Trail of Tears, the California gold rush, and the forced removal of Native children to off-reservation boarding schools. The people portrayed in these pages belong to various tribes, including Potawatomis, Lakotas, Oneidas, and Cherokees. Their individual stories, ranging from humorous to tragic, give readers a palpable sense of how tribal peoples reacted to the disruptive changes forced on them by European colonizers and U.S. government policies. Both entertaining and insightful, the stories in this volume traverse a range of time periods, events, themes, and genres. As such, they reverberate like voices in the drum, inviting readers of all backgrounds to engage anew with the rich history and cultures of indigenous peoples.

One of America's unique contributions to world culture, the cowboy has captured the imagination of people everywhere. In The Cowboy: Six-Shooters, Songs, and Sex, eight renowned western writers report on what the cowboys really were like and what they are like today. Contributors detail how the cowboys lived, loved, and died, how they fared when ranchers switched from running cattle to entertaining dudes, and how the media have depicted the cowboy.

These letters, collected and transcribed by Captain Robert Goldthwaite Carter in the 1870s, are among the finest primary sources on the daily life of the Union soldier in the Civil War. Robert and his three brothers all saw action with the Army of the Potomac under its various commanders, Generals McClellan, Burnside, Hooker, Meade, and Grant. At times in pairs but often in neighboring units, they fought on the battlefields of Bull Run, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, the Wilderness, and Petersburg.

In the 140 years since the defeat of George Armstrong Custer and his troops at the Battle of the Little Big Horn, scholars and other visitors have combed the site of today's Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument for evidence that might clarify the controversial events of June 1876. In Photographing Custer's Battlefield, Sandy Barnard, an expert on Custer and the Little Big Horn, presents the work of the site's most dedicated photographer, U.S. Fish and Game agent Kenneth F. Roahen (1888-1976), revealing further mysteries of the battlefield and showing how it has changed. Barnard opens by introducing readers to Roahen, who spent the last phase of his career and his retirement years in Montana, where he made it his personal mission from the 1930s to the 1970s to photograph what was then called Custer Battlefield. Among Roahen's most useful images are his photographs of the Crow's Nest, the Morass, and Girard's Knoll--places whose precise locations have long been debated. He also made a series of pioneering aerial photographs of the Little Big Horn and its surrounding landscape. When paired with Barnard's modern-day photographs, maps, and thorough analysis, Roahen's images provide valuable information for visitors to the monument as well as for historians, biologists, engineers, and other government employees who interpret, preserve, and protect the battlefield and its surrounding terrain. In addition to showing sites associated with the fighting, Roahen's photographs depict mid-twentieth-century roadwork, archaeological surveys and restorations, and construction of the visitor center, park housing, and maintenance facilities. Barnard's matching photographs, taken in 2012 and 2013, help to identify additional subtle but significant landscape modifications. The numerous debates surrounding the Battle of the Little Big Horn have made on-the-ground evidence especially important. Roahen's photographic legacy, explored here in more than 300 historic and contemporary images, offers fresh insight into the battlefield's ever-changing landscape, helping visitors old and new to better understand the history beneath their feet.

For the past twenty-five years, our country's last Indian war has been raging in the Joint Use Area around Big Mountain and Coal Mine Mesa, Arizona. There Navajos are pitted against their Hopi neighbors--and against a United States government that has divided the land between the two tribes and then decreed that Indians living on the wrong side must move. With the narrative sweep and emotional veracity of a great novel, Emily Benedek recounts the tortuous progress of the Navajo-Hopi land dispute and portrays the lives it has consumed.

Even though the Civil War is among the best-documented wars in world history, the story of the individual soldier is not well documented. What is the story of the men in blue and gray? In The Fighting Men of the Civil War, William C. Davis shows us that for these soldiers the Civil War was far removed from politics, from the great question of slavery, even from the movement of armies. Shifting his focus from the officer to the men in the ranks, he begins with enlistment and training, follows with life in the camp and on the march, and concludes with experiences of combat, imprisonment, and sickness. Following the men through a wealth of anecdotes and firsthand accounts. Davis brings us the reality of war. Each branch of the service is highlighted, as are combatants such as sailors in both navies and the many African-American troops traditionally denied the limelight.Camp life, uniforms, weapons, and a host of personal items are featured in a series of specially commissioned photographs - together with illustrations of there arms, armament, and uniforms of both Confederate and Federal forces.

When Parrington's Pulitzer Prize-winning history of American ideas was first published, Henry Seidel Canby wrote, "This is a work of the first importance, lucid, comprehensive, accurate as sound scholarship should be, and also challenging, original in its thinking, shrewd, and sometimes brilliant." Alfred Kazin has called Main Currents in American Thought "the most ambitious single effort of the Progressive mind to understand itself." In the Foreword to this new edition, David W. Levy argues that Parrington's intellectual survey "will stand as a model for venturesome scholars for years to come. Readers and scholars of the rising generation may not follow Parrington's particular judgments or point of view, but it is hard to believe that they will not still be captivated and inspired by his sparkle, his breadth, his daring, and the ardor of his political commitment." Volume I, The Colonial Mind, 1620-1800, treats such influential figures as John Winthrop, Roger Williams, Samuel Sewall, Increase and Cotton Mather, Jonathan Edwards, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, Tom Paine, and Thomas Jefferson.

This famous memoir by John McCorkle, reissued for the first time, is the best published account by a scout who rode with Quantrill. John McCorkle was a young Missouri farmer of Southern sympathies. After serving briefly in the pro-Confederate Missouri State Guard, he became a prominent member of William Clarke Quantrill's infamous guerrillas, who took advantage of the turmoil in the Missouri-Kansas borderland to prey on pro-Union people.McCorkle displayed an unflinchingly violent nature while he participated in raids and engagements including the massacres at Lawrence and Baxter Springs, Kansas, and Centralia, Missouri. In 1865 he followed Quantrill into Kentucky, where the notorious leader was killed and his followers, McCorkle among them, surrendered and were paroled by Union authorities. Early in this century, having returned to farming, McCorkle told his remarkable Civil War experiences to O.S. Barton, a lawyer, who wrote this book, first published in 1914.

A generation after the U.S. conquest of California, Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo set out to write the story of the land he knew so well--a history to dispel the romantic vision quickly overtaking the state's recent past. The five-volume history he produced, published here for the first time in English translation, is the most complete account of California before the gold rush by someone who resided in California at the time. Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo (1807-90) grew up in Spanish California, became a leading military and political figure in Mexican California, and participated in some of the founding events of U.S. California, such as the Monterey Constitutional Convention and the first legislature. With his project, undertaken for historian and publisher Hubert Howe Bancroft, Vallejo sought to correct misrepresentations of California's past, which dismissed as insignificant the pre-gold rush Spanish and Mexican periods--conflated into one "Mission era." Instead, Vallejo's history emphasized the role of the military in the Spanish colonization of California and argued that the missionaries after Junípero Serra, with their medieval ideas, had actually retarded the development of California until secularization in the early 1830s. Culture, he contended, was of intense interest to the Californio people, as was the education of children. His accounts of Indigenous peoples, while often sympathetic, were also characteristic of his time: he and other California military leaders, Vallejo maintained, had successfully subdued "hostile" Indians and established mutually beneficial relationships with others. Out of keeping with Bancroft's American triumphalism, Vallejo's monumental project was consigned to the archives. With their deft translation and commentary, Rose Marie Beebe and Robert M. Senkewicz--authors of a companion volume on Vallejo's work--have brought to light a remarkable perspective, often firsthand, on important events in early California history. Their efforts restore a critical chapter to the story of California and the American West.

Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo (1807-90) grew up in Spanish California, became a leading military and political figure in Mexican California, and participated in some of the founding events of U.S. California. In 1874-75, Vallejo, working with historian and publisher Hubert Howe Bancroft, composed a five-volume history of Alta California--a monumental work that would be the most complete eyewitness account of California before the gold rush. But Bancroft shelved the work, and it has lain in the archives until its recent publication as Recuerdos: Historical and Personal Remembrances Relating to Alta California, 1769-1849, translated and edited by Rose Marie Beebe and Robert M. Senkewicz. In Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo: Life in Spanish, Mexican, and American California, Beebe and Senkewicz not only illuminate Vallejo's life and history but also examine the broader experience of the nineteenth-century Californio community. In eight essays, the authors consider Spanish and Mexican rule in California, mission secularization, the rise of rancho culture, and the conflicts between settlers and Indigenous Californians, especially in the post-mission era. Vallejo was uniquely positioned to provide insight into early California's foundation, and as a defender of culture and education among Mexican Californians, he also offered a rare perspective on the cultural life of the Mexican American community. In their final chapter, Beebe and Senkewicz include a significant portion of the correspondence between Vallejo and his wife, Francisca Benicia, for what it reveals about the effects of the American conquest on family and gender roles. A long-overdue in-depth look at one of the preeminent Mexican Americans in nineteenth-century California, Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo also provides an unprecedented view of the Mexican American experience during that transformative era.

Many Anglo-Americans in the nineteenth century regarded Indian tribes as little more than illiterate bands of savages in need of "civilizing." Few were willing to recognize that one of the major Southeastern tribes targeted for removal west of the Mississippi already had an advanced civilization with its own system of writing and rich literary tradition. In Literacy and Intellectual Life in the Cherokee Nation, 1820-1906, James W. Parins traces the rise of bilingual literacy and intellectual life in the Cherokee Nation during the nineteenth century--a time of intense social and political turmoil for the tribe. By the 1820s, Cherokees had perfected a system for writing their language--the syllabary created by Sequoyah--and in a short time taught it to virtually all their citizens. Recognizing the need to master the language of the dominant society, the Cherokee Nation also developed a superior public school system that taught students in English. The result was a literate population, most of whom could read the Cherokee Phoenix, the tribal newspaper founded in 1828 and published in both Cherokee and English. English literacy allowed Cherokee leaders to deal with the white power structure on their own terms: Cherokees wrote legal briefs, challenged members of Congress and the executive branch, and bargained for their tribe as white interests sought to take their land and end their autonomy. In addition, many Cherokee poets, fiction writers, essayists, and journalists published extensively after 1850, paving the way for the rich literary tradition that the nation preserves and fosters today. Literary and Intellectual Life in the Cherokee Nation, 1820-1906 takes a fascinating look at how literacy served to unite Cherokees during a critical moment in their national history, and advances our understanding of how literacy has functioned as a tool of sovereignty among Native peoples, both historically and today.

"The Songdog sings an ancient song. It echoed over the Western plains and deserts long before man was there to hear it. The singer and the song have survived the mastodon, the mammoth, the elephants and the camels that once roamed this continent. The coyote's voice has not been stilled. Not even by man...In 'The Coyote,' the reader will find many books in one. It is a biography that traces the life story of one coyote from birth to adulthood; an historical and current description of predator control; a sometimes violent adventure story; and, most of all, an examination of creature physchology."-Anaheim Bulletin "The viewpoints of both rancher and environmentalist are presented in this intelligent, often shocking book on the emotional coyote controversy. The amazing adaptability of this small predator leads the author to question humankind's right to interfere with nature. Unusual illustrations depict the coyote's desert life."-American West

Founded in 1834 on the high plains of present-day eastern Wyoming. Fort Laramie evolved into an organizational hub and chief supply center for the U.S. Army in its campaigns against the Sioux and Cheyenne Indians. Fort Laramie and the Great Sioux War focuses on a crucial year in the history of the fort, 1876. That was the year of General George Crook's Big Horn; the Black Hills gold rush; and chaos at the Red Cloud and Spotted Tail Indian agencies. Paul Hedren draws upon official army records, diaries, and journals to illuminate a fort-based history of the Great Sioux War, and for this edition he also provides a new preface.

To a degree incomprehensible to the modern mind, skywatchers of the ancient past found the night sky a source of wonder and mystery. As Evan Hadingham so brilliantly demonstrates in his latest book, they found the skies an enormous challenge as well. These ancient astronomers met the challenge by devising techniques with which they could predict, often with astounding precision, the cycles and eclipses of the sun, moon and planets as they passed across the heavens. With these skills - and with the visions of the universe they created as a framework for their observations - early astronomers were able to address both the everyday and spiritual needs of their people. At times, some of them may have used their arcane craft to wield vast religious and political power over their fellow men.Drawing on the latest findings of archeologists and modern astronomers, Hadingham explores the ample evidence of the ingenuity of the early astronomers: the ziggurats of Babylon (the Tower of Babel); Egypt's pyramids; Stonehenge and other megalithic arrays in Great Britain, and the enigmatic 360-ton fallen megalith, the Fairy Stone in Brittany.Moving from the Old World to the New, Hadingham illuminates recent discoveries of the American Southwest: the Chumash cave art of California; sun-dagger solar devices of New Mexico; and the intriguing alignments of twelfth-century pueblos, near which early astronomers still practice a form of their ancient art today. Particular attention is given the extraordinary current studies of the temples and cosmologies of the Maya, whose ancient priests compiled books of lunar cycles so accurate that their error is only two hours every five centuries.Wherever they worked, Hadingham points out, the ancient astronomers evolved a unifying vision of their universe, through which they provided a myth explaining the natural and supernatural order of things. Often overseen by a pantheon of super beings that bolstered the powers of earthly kings and priests, these celestial visions helped to order such matters as planting and irrigation and to maintain calendars for the affairs of men. Most importantly, the visions inspired great ceremonies that celebrated life on earth and life hereafter.Early Man and the Cosmos is a fascinating study of man's perception of the universe that illuminates our understanding not only of ancient man but also of ourselves.

The Ch'ol Maya who live in the western Mexican state of Chiapas are direct descendants of the Maya of the Classic period. Exploring their history and culture, volume editor Karen Bassie-Sweet and the other authors assembled here uncover clear continuity between contemporary Maya rituals and beliefs and their ancient counterparts. With evocative and thoughtful essays by leading scholars of Maya culture, The Ch'ol Maya of Chiapas, the first collection to focus fully on the Ch'ol Maya, takes readers deep into ancient caves and reveals new dimensions of Ch'ol cosmology. In contemporary Ch'ol culture the contributors find a wealth of historical material that they then interweave with archaeological data to yield surprising and illuminating insights. The colonial and twentieth-century descendants of the Postclassic period Ch'ol and Lacandon Ch'ol, for instance, provide a window on the history and conquest of the early Maya. Several authors examine Early Classic paintings in the Ch'ol ritual cave known as Jolja that document ancient cave ceremonies not unlike Ch'ol rituals performed today, such as petitioning a cave-dwelling mountain spirit for health, rain, and abundant harvests. Other essays investigate deities identified with caves, mountains, lightning, and meteors to trace the continuity of ancient Maya beliefs through the centuries, in particular the ancient origin of contemporary rituals centering on the Ch'ol mountain deity Don Juan. An appendix containing three Ch'ol folktales and their English translations rounds out the volume. Charting paths literal and figurative to earlier trade routes, pre-Columbian sites, and ancient rituals and beliefs, The Ch'ol Maya of Chiapas opens a fresh, richly informed perspective on Maya culture as it has evolved and endured over the ages.

Composed in the fourth century b.c., the Phaedrus--a dialogue between Phaedrus and Socrates--deals ostensibly with love but develops into a wide-ranging discussion of such subjects as the pursuit of beauty, the nature of humanity, the immortality of the soul, and the attainment of truth, ending with an in-depth discussion of the principles of rhetoric. This erudite commentary, which also includes the original Greek text, is designed to help intermediate-level students of Greek read, understand, and enjoy Plato's magnificent work.Drawing on his extensive classroom experience and linguistic expertise, Paul Ryan offers a commentary that is both rich in detail and--in contrast to earlier, more austere commentaries on the Phaedrus--fully engaging. Line by line, he explains subtle points of language, explicates difficulties of syntax, and brings out nuances of tone and meaning that students might not otherwise notice or understand. Ryan sections his commentary into units of convenient length for classroom use, with short summaries at the head of each section to orient the reader.Never straying far from the text itself, Ryan provides useful historical glosses and annotations for the student, introducing information ranging from the architecture of the Lyceum to Athenian politics. Further historical and philosophical context is provided in the introduction by Mary Louise Gill, who outlines the issues addressed in the Phaedrus and situates it in relation to Plato's other dialogues.

Animal Behavior looks at the fascinating activities of animals as they progress from birth to maturity-how they attract a mate and care for their young, find shelter and food, defend themselves, navigate sometimes vast distances and survive the many challenges of life.Written by a team of international experts, this beautiful book is full of examples drawn from the activities of all types of animals-mammals, birds, reptiles, fish, and insects. The relationships animals have with other animals-those on whom they depend, those whom they must repel-are a major element in their activities. More than a source of beauty and wonder, animals' behavior is important to the earth's ecological balance, and thus a key to the vitality of the planet.

This book brings together as complete a record of traditional Yup'ik rules and rituals as is possible in the late twentieth century. Incorporating elders' recollections of the system of ruled boundaries and ritual passages that guided their parents and grandparents a century ago, Ann Fienup-Riordan brings into focus the complex, creative Yup'ik world view--expressed by ceremonial exchanges and the cycling of names, gifts, and persons--which continues to shape daily life in communities along the Bering Sea coast.

This superb ethnographic study, illustrated by 120 remarkable color photographs, explodes the conventional idea of Eskimos as simple, primitive people. Concentrating on their traditional society, anthropologist Ernest S. Burch, Jr, and renowned photographer Werner Forman show them as not only pragmatic and highly skilled but also sophisticated in their personal relationships and their ability to live together in constrictive family communities. The text and the photographs in this book explore the Eskimos' art, their rich mythology, and their beliefs-their stories, their spirit world, and the role of shamans in their lives.