Scottish novelist Jane Duncan’s semiautobiographical My Friends series was dismissed by postwar critics as lightweight, at a time when a coterie of “angry young men” monopolized the attention of the B
From novels to films, our everyday lives are filled with stories that comfort and connect us and enable new ways of thinking. One of the most innovative writers in modern history, Virginia Woolf, chan
When President Lincoln issued his 1861 call to arms, the 63rd, 69th and 88th New York Volunteers were among the first to step forward. Comprised primarily of first and second generation Irish immigran
This is the biography of Thomas Abthorpe Cooper, the first star of the American stage. Cooper was the chief transitional figure between the British and American stage and contributed greatly to the de
The simplicity of children’s picture books—stories told with illustrations and a few well chosen words or none at all—makes them powerful tools for teaching morals and personal integrity. Children fo
The essays in this book examine the ideology of motherhood in British and American literature from the 16th to the 21st centuries. This book looks at the institution of motherhood, that is, at various
"During 1864, Virginia's Shenandoah Valley was one of the most contested regions of the South. This book describes the third campaign, the supreme achievement of the Army of the Potomac's Sixth Corps.
Louis Paulsen (1833–1891) was one of the 19th century’s strongest chess players and a world record holder in blindfold chess. He maintained an unbeaten record in matches, created several opening syste
From Vampira to Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, female horror movie hosts have long been a staple of late-night television. Broadcast on local stations and cable access channels, characters such as Moon
After a century of reinvention and reinterpretation, Western movies continue to contribute to the cultural understanding of the United States. Western archetypes remain important emblems of the Americ
"Drawing on personal letters, diaries and memoirs by men of the 16th New York Volunteer Cavalry, and the recollections of Confederate Colonel John Mosby's men, this deeply researched history provides
"John Harrison Surratt, Jr., was a courier for the Confederate Secret Service and the only one of John Wilkes Booth's co-conspirators in the Lincoln assassination plot to escape hanging by the U.S. go
The cultural fantasy of twins imagines them as physically and behaviorally identical. Media portrayals consistently reproduce the spectacle of twins who share an insular closeness and perform a suppos
Dystopian fiction captivates us by depicting future worlds at once eerily similar and shockingly foreign to our own. This collection of new essays presents some of the most recent scholarship on a gen
The western genre touched on ideals of honor, conquest, and freedom of spirit, and its stories packed cinemas of the early sound era. This volume covers 30 western film series produced from the mid 19
The 1950s television game show was a cultural fundamental for the decade, reflecting the zeitgeist of a flourishing modern nation. The author explores the iconography of the mid-century U.S. in the co
Symbolic ornamentation inspired by ancient Greek and Roman art is a long-standing Western tradition. Eighteenth century English gun designers, drawing upon this tradition, engraved classical imagery o
[In 1941, the U.S. Army activated the 758th Tank Battalion, the first all-black tank battalion. This took years of protests and a lot of political clout because African Americans had to fight for the
Sir Christopher Lee (1922–2015) was one of the most beloved actors of the past sixty years. He appeared in more than 200 feature films—from Hammer Horror and James Bond thrillers to Star Wars and Lord
This first biography of W. Glenn Killinger highlights his tenure as a nine-time varsity letterman at Penn State, where he emerged as one of the best football, basketball and baseball players in the U.
