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In the Heat of the Summer: The New York Riots of 1964 and the War on Crime
Michael W. Flamm
On the morning of July 16, 1964, a white police officer in New York City shot and killed a black teenager, James Powell, across the street from the high school where he was attending summer classes. Two nights later, a peaceful demonstration in Central Harlem degenerated into violent protests. During the next week, thousands of rioters looted stores from Brooklyn to Rochester and pelted police with bottles and rocks. In the symbolic and historic heart of black America, the Harlem Riot of 1964, as most called it, highlighted a new dynamic in the racial politics of the nation. The first "long, hot summer" of the Sixties had arrived. In this gripping narrative of a pivotal moment, Michael W. Flamm draws on personal interviews and delves into the archives to move briskly from the streets of New York, where black activists like Bayard Rustin tried in vain to restore peace, to the corridors of the White House, where President Lyndon Johnson struggled to contain the fallout from the crisis and defeat Republican challenger Barry Goldwater, who had made "crime in the streets" a centerpiece of his campaign. Recognizing the threat to his political future and the fragile alliance of black and white liberals, Johnson promised that the War on Poverty would address the "root causes" of urban disorder. A year later, he also launched the War on Crime, which widened the federal role in law enforcement and set the stage for the War on Drugs. Today James Powell is forgotten amid the impassioned debates over the militarization of policing and the harmful impact of mass incarceration on minority communities. But his death was a catalyst for the riots in New York, which in turn foreshadowed future explosions and influenced the political climate for the crime and drug policies of recent decades. In the Heat of the Summer spotlights the extraordinary drama of a single week when peaceful protests and violent unrest intersected, the freedom struggle reached a crossroads, and the politics of law and order led to demands for a War on Crime.
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Bishop McIlvaine, Slavery, Britain & the Civil War
Richard W. Smith
Bishop Charles P. McIlvaine was an important figure in nineteenth century America. As one of the leading evangelicals in the Protestant Episcopal Church, the Ohioan became the pivotal figure in the evangelical Episcopal-Anglican community. Famed as a preacher and speaker, his books and pamphlets were read by trans-Atlantic audience. His endeavors in the United Kingdom resulted in honorary degrees from Cambridge University and Oxford University. Aware of his reputation in England, the Lincoln Administration sent him to Britain in 1861. Working with Thurlow Weed, he sought to swing middle and upper class opinion into a pro-federal position. After six months abroad, his persuasive leadership induced the Federal Episcopal Convention to support the union war effort, which included Lincoln's emancipation policy. In this first biography of McIlvaine, Smith mined British and American sources never before utilized. The book reveals the bishop's complex persona. a rich and, at times, sorrowful family saga unfolds. As a reformer, he became an anti-slave advocate. This groundbreaking account develops the struggles encountered and the significance of the informal mission for federal policies. The political overtones in his friendship with the Prince of Wales are examined. Comfortable in any secular or military environment, McIlvaine's other wartime activities enabled him to report to Lincoln when necessary. In later years, he undertook length sojourns in England as he was busy with English and European religious questions. Dying in Italy, he was honored in Britain and America.
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Staying Afloat: Risk and Uncertainty in Spanish Atlantic World Trade, 1760-1820
Jeremy Baskes
Early modern, long-distance trade was fraught with risk and uncertainty, driving merchants to seek means (that is, institutions) to reduce them. In the traditional historiography on Spanish colonial trade, the role of risk is largely ignored. Instead, the guild merchants are depicted as anti-competitive monopolists who manipulated markets and exploited colonial consumers. Jeremy Baskes argues that much of the commercial behavior interpreted by modern historians as predatory was instead designed to reduce the uncertainty and risk of Atlantic world trade. This book discusses topics from the development and use of maritime insurance in eighteenth- century Spain to the commercial strategies of Spanish merchants; the traditionally misunderstood effects of the 1778 promulgation of "comercio libre," and the financial chaos and bankruptcies that ensued; the economic rationale for the Spanish flotillas; and the impact of war and privateering on commerce and business decisions. By elevating risk to the center of focus, this multifaceted study makes a number of revisionist contributions to the late colonial economic history of the Spanish empire.
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Negotiating the Landscape: Environment and Monastic Identity in the Medieval Ardennes
Ellen Arnold
Negotiating the Landscape explores the question of how medieval religious identities were shaped and modified by interaction with the natural environment. Focusing on the Benedictine monastic community of Stavelot-Malmedy in the Ardennes, Ellen F. Arnold draws upon a rich archive of charters, property and tax records, correspondence, miracle collections, and saints' lives from the seventh to the mid-twelfth century to explore the contexts in which the monks' intense engagement with the natural world was generated and refined. Arnold argues for a broad cultural approach to medieval environmental history and a consideration of a medieval environmental imagination through which people perceived the nonhuman world and their own relation to it. Concerned to reassert medieval Christianity's vitality and variety, Arnold also seeks to oppose the historically influential view that the natural world was regarded in the premodern period as provided by God solely for human use and exploitation. The book argues that, rather than possessing a single unifying vision of nature, the monks drew on their ideas and experience to create and then manipulate a complex understanding of their environment. Viewing nature as both wild and domestic, they simultaneously acted out several roles, as stewards of the land and as economic agents exploiting natural resources. They saw the natural world of the Ardennes as a type of wilderness, a pastoral haven, and a source of human salvation, and actively incorporated these differing views of nature into their own attempts to build their community, understand and establish their religious identity, and relate to others who shared their landscape.
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The Chicago Handbook for Teachers: A Practical Guide to the College Classroom
Michael W. Flamm, Alan Brinkley, Betty Dessants, Esam E. El-Fakahany, Charles B. Forcey Jr., Matthew L. Ouellett, and Eric Rothschild
2nd edition.
Those who teach college students have extensive training in their disciplines, but unlike their counterparts at the high school or elementary school level, they often have surprisingly little instruction in the craft of teaching itself. The Chicago Handbook for Teachers, Second Edition , is an extraordinarily helpful guide for anyone facing the daunting challenge of putting together a course and delivering it successfully. Representing teachers at all stages of their careers, the authors, including distinguished historian Alan Brinkley, offer practical advice for almost any situation a new teacher might face, from preparing a syllabus to managing classroom dynamics. Beginning with a nuts and bolts plan for designing a course, the handbook also explains how to lead a discussion, evaluate your own teaching, give an effective lecture, supervise students' writing and research, create and grade exams, and more. This new edition is thoroughly revised for contemporary concerns, with updated coverage on the use of electronic resources and on the challenge of creating and sustaining an inclusive classroom. A new chapter on science education and new coverage of the distinctive issues faced by adjunct faculty broaden the book's audience considerably. The addition of sample teaching materials in the appendixes enhances the practical, hands-on focus of the second edition. Its broad scope and wealth of specific tips will make The Chicago Handbook for Teachers useful both as a comprehensive guide for beginning educators and a reference manual for experienced instructors.
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Debating the Reagan Presidency
Michael W. Flamm and John Ehrmann
The presidency of Ronald Reagan has become a Rorschach test for politicians and citizens alike. While many conservatives see the Reagan era of the 1980s as the high-water mark for their movement and a time of national recovery from the difficulties of the 1970s, many liberals maintain that the rosy Reagan legacy is based largely on myth, and that in fact his eight years as president caused serious harm to the country. John Ehrman and Michael W. Flamm give due attention to the lasting controversies surrounding the Reagan record and provide a balanced view of the fortieth president's foreign and domestic politics. Students are encouraged to draw their own conclusions by reading key primary documents.
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Debating the 1960s: Liberal, Conservative, and Radical Perspectives
Michael W. Flamm and David Steigerwald
The conventional interpretation of the 1960s emphasizes how liberal, even radical, the decade was. It was, after all, the age of mass protests against the Vietnam War and social movements on behalf of civil rights and women's rights. It was also an era when the counterculture challenged many of the values and beliefs held by morally traditional Americans. But a newer interpretation stresses how truly polarized the 1960s were. It portrays how radicals, liberals, and conservatives repeatedly clashed in ideological combat for the hearts and minds of Americans. Millions in the center and on the right contested the counterculture, defended the Vietnam War, and opposed civil rights.
Debating the 1960s explores the decade through the arguments and controversies between radicals, liberals, and conservatives. The focus is on four main areas of contention: social welfare, civil rights, foreign relations, and social order. The book also examines the emergence of the New Left and the modern conservative movement. Finally, it assesses the enduring importance of the 1960s on contemporary American politics and society. Combining analytical essays and historical documents, the book highlights the polarization of the decade by focusing on the political, social, and cultural debates that divided the nation then and now.
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From the May Fourth Movement to Communist Revolution: Guo Moruo and the Chinese Path to Communism
Xiaoming Chen
Using the life and work of influential Chinese writer Guo Moruo (1892-1978), reflects on China's encounters with modernity, Communism, and capitalism.
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Law and Order: Street Crime Civil Unrest and the Crisis of Liberalism in the 1960s
Michael W. Flamm
Law and Order offers a valuable new study of the political and social history of the 1960s. It presents a sophisticated account of how the issues of street crime and civil unrest enhanced the popularity of conservatives, eroded the credibility of liberals, and transformed the landscape of American politics. Ultimately, the legacy of law and order was a political world in which the grand ambitions of the Great Society gave way to grim expectations.
In the mid-1960s, amid a pervasive sense that American society was coming apart at the seams, a new issue known as law and order emerged at the forefront of national politics. First introduced by Barry Goldwater in his ill-fated run for president in 1964, it eventually punished Lyndon Johnson and the Democrats and propelled Richard Nixon and the Republicans to the White House in 1968. In this thought-provoking study, Michael Flamm examines how conservatives successfully blamed liberals for the rapid rise in street crime and then skillfully used law and order to link the understandable fears of white voters to growing unease about changing moral values, the civil rights movement, urban disorder, and antiwar protests.
Flamm documents how conservatives constructed a persuasive message that argued that the civil rights movement had contributed to racial unrest and the Great Society had rewarded rather than punished the perpetrators of violence. The president should, conservatives also contended, promote respect for law and order and contempt for those who violated it, regardless of cause. Liberals, Flamm argues, were by contrast unable to craft a compelling message for anxious voters. Instead, liberals either ignored the crime crisis, claimed that law and order was a racist ruse, or maintained that social programs would solve the "root causes" of civil disorder, which by 1968 seemed increasingly unlikely and contributed to a loss of faith in the ability of the government to do what it was above all sworn to do-protect personal security and private property.