History Commons^™

The William F. Charters Collection: An Introduction, George W. Geib

George W. Geib

No abstract provided.

The Use Of Miniatures In Gaming, George W. Geib

George W. Geib

The world of the miniature lies somewhere between the collector's and the historian's and owes its current popularity to the world of wargaming. But the origins of the miniature lie far from the simulation in the field of artisan crafts.

An Elector's Notebook, George Geib

George W. Geib

George Geib's invited editor's comment.

Benjamin Harrison, George W. Geib

George W. Geib

An account of Benjamin Harrison's rise to the presidency beginning with his successful career during the Civil War.

Magna Carta Then And Now: A Symbol Of Freedom And Equal Rights For All, Eugene K B Tan, Jack Tsen-Ta Lee

Jack Tsen-Ta LEE

Magna Carta became applicable to Singapore in 1826 when a court system administering English law was established in the Straits Settlements. This remained the case through Singapore’s evolution from Crown colony to independent republic. The Great Charter only ceased to apply in 1993, when Parliament enacted the Application of English Law Act to clarify which colonial laws were still part of Singapore law. Nonetheless, Magna Carta’s legacy in Singapore continues in a number of ways. Principles such as due process of law and the supremacy of law are cornerstones of the rule of law, vital to the success, stability and …

Climb To The Ice, Richard Vaughan

Richard Vaughan

The article, originally presented as a lecture, discusses George Bird Grinnell's 1887 climb of the Montana glacier that eventually become known as Grinnell Glacier. Grinnell’s efforts to establish Glacier National Park are detailed. Grinnell's previously unpublished descriptions of the glacier and its surrounding area are analyzed by the author. Originally delivered as a lecture at the Montana History Conference, October 2, 2010. Full issue available at: http://issuu.com/um_crown_gye/docs/crownofthecontinent-autumn2012

To The Ice: George Bird Grinnell's 1887 Ascent Of Grinnell Glacier, Richard Vaughan

Richard Vaughan

This article discusses a climbing expedition undertaken by U.S. conservationist George Bird Grinnell to ascend what would come to be known as Grinnell Glacier in Montana. Grinnell’s efforts to establish Glacier National Park are detailed. Grinnell’s previously unpublished descriptions of the glacier and its surrounding area are analyzed by the author.

Broad Are Nebraska's Rolling Plains: The Early Writings Of George Bird Grinnell, Richard Vaughan

Richard Vaughan

Profiles the life of writer George Bird Grinnell (1849-1938) and the influence his first trip to Nebraska had in shaping his early writings about the American West. Among the works he published were several groundbreaking books about the Plains Indians of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Not only did this 1870 trip to Nebraska, as a member of O. C. Marsh’s first Yale Paleontological Expedition, influence Grinnell's scholarly endeavors, but his deep interest in the state also influenced his lifelong devotion to environmental preservation and established him as an important advocate for the protection and welfare of Native …

Contesting The Dinosaur Image: The Labor Movement's Search For A Future, Richard W. Hurd

Richard W Hurd

[Excerpt] As labor contests the dinosaur image it will find no easy answers. Hard work, careful assessment of options, and a willingness to take risks are all required. Without widespread experimentation and a significant reallocation of resources to organizing, extinction awaits.

Une Amérique Française, 1760-1860: Dynamiques Du Corridor Créole, Guillaume Teasdale, Tangi Villerbu

Guillaume Teasdale

Factional Identity In Fifteenth-Century Florence, Brian Maxson

Brian J. Maxson

Joe Hill Centenary And Iww Songs In Australia, Mark Gregory

Mark Gregory

No abstract provided.

Scholarly Communication Institutions: Transforming Scholarship With History, Shawn Martin

Shawn Martin

Review: 'Religion In America Since 1945: A History', William Vance Trollinger

William Vance Trollinger Jr.

Anyone who has taught a course in U.S. religious history knows the daunting challenge of adequately dealing with the riotous diversity of religion in America. This challenge moves from daunting to nearly overwhelming when one gets to the years after World War II. But now comes along Patrick Allitt, professor of history at Emory University, who, in Religion in America Since 1945, has managed to create out of this apparent chaos a lucid, compelling narrative of recent U.S. religious history.

Of course, and as Allitt observes in his introduction, in order to “prevent the book from taking the form of …

Biology Textbooks And The Decentering Of The Scopes Trial, William Vance Trollinger

William Vance Trollinger Jr.

I was reminded of this while reading Adam Shapiro’s fine book, Trying Biology: The Scopes Trial, Textbooks, and the Antievolution Movement in American Schools. Central to Trying Biology is the argument that the Scopes Trial was not the inevitable result of an eternal conflict between science and religion, but instead grew out of "debates over American education that had little to do with either science or religion" (12). As Shapiro nicely articulates, the school antievolution movement that emerged in the early 1920s was a backlash against schools teaching evolution "in a politically charged way" and "to a new population of …

Review: 'The Rise Of Liberal Religion: Book Culture And American Spirituality In The Twentieth Century', William Vance Trollinger

William Vance Trollinger Jr.

Laubach’s story—in its emphasis on the spiritual benefits of reading, mysticism, and interfaith encounters— serves as the perfect coda to Hedstrom’s terrific study of religious liberalism in twentieth-century America. The Rise of Liberal Religion joins an expanding corpus of work—most notably Gary Dorrien’s three-volume The Making of American Liberal Theology (2001, 2003, 2006) and Leigh Eric Schmidt’s Restless Souls: The Making of American Spirituality from Emerson to Oprah (2005)—that provides balance to the substantive scholarly attention recently given to conservative Protestantism. This scholarship suggests—and The Rise of Liberal Religion is explicit in this regard—that there is much more to the …

Review: 'Harold Frederic’S Social Drama And The Crisis Of 1890s Evangelical Protestant Culture', William Vance Trollinger

William Vance Trollinger Jr.

Harold Frederic’s The Damnation of Theron Ware (1896) is a terrific novel. The title character is a young, naïve, poorly educated Methodist minister who — when the narrative begins — has been appointed to take the pastorate of a small-town church in upstate New York. It is within only a matter of weeks after moving to Octavius with his wife, Alice, that Theron makes the acquaintance of exotic and compelling individuals who challenge his heretofore unexamined evangelical faith. Abandoning his Methodism with impunity, Ware is soon hurtling toward his “damnation.”

Damned but not dead: At the end of the novel, …

Review: 'Spirit And Flesh: Life In A Fundamentalist Baptist Church', William Trollinger

Bill Trollinger

If there is a better study of fundamentalism at the local level than Spirit and Flesh, I have not read it. In this book, sociologist and filmmaker James Ault expands on his award-winning documentary, Born Again, to give us a richly detailed report of his three years as a participant-observer in a fundamentalist Baptist church (referred to as Shawmut River) in Worcester, Massachusetts. He describes Sunday morning worship, Wednesday evening services, and home Bible studies; he discusses how the congregation dealt with divorce, teenage pregnancy, and alcoholism, and how their fundamentalist faith helped “reorder” (and failed to “reorder”) their family …

Review: 'Evangelizing The Chosen People: Missions To The Jews In America, 1880–2000', William Vance Trollinger

William Vance Trollinger Jr.

As bizarre as all this may seem to the uninitiated, Yaakov Ariel makes clear in Evangelizing the Chosen People that the aforementioned event is simply part of the latest chapter in an ongoing story within American religious history. Going where no scholar has gone before, Ariel recounts the history of Protestant missions to the Jews in the United States. Making good use of missions’ organization records and the writings of Jewish converts to Christianity, Ariel divides his narrative into three parts: evangelizing Jewish immigrants (1880–1920); evangelizing the children of Jewish immigrants (1920–1965); and evangelizing Jewish Baby Boomers (1965–2000). The last …

Review: 'One Hundred Percent American: The Rebirth And Decline Of The Ku Klux Klan In The 1920s', William Vance Trollinger

William Vance Trollinger Jr.

It is remarkable that, given the significance of the Klan, a good general history of it has not been written—until now. In One Hundred Percent American, the Loyola University Maryland professor Thomas R. Pegram draws upon his primary research as well as the plethora of books, articles, and dissertations that have been written on local and state organizations in the past few decades to provide a nicely readable account of the Klan’s rise and fall in the 1920s.

(Given the author’s assiduous research, it is unfortunate this book lacks a bibliography.)

In the process of telling the Klan’s story, Pegram …

Review: 'Inventing The Holy Land: American Protestant Pilgrimage To Palestine, 1865–1941', William Vance Trollinger

William Vance Trollinger Jr.

Stephanie Stidham Rogers examines American Protestant tourism in Palestine from 1865, when travel to the Middle East from the United States began to take off, until the onset of World War II. Using thirty-five pilgrimage narratives as the basis of her study—and it would have been helpful to have a separate and annotated bibliographical section for these narratives—Rogers discusses how American Protestant visitors were troubled by the poverty and filth, dismayed by the ubiquity of Catholic and Orthodox shrines, and outraged by the role of Muslims in administering Christian holy sites. In response, these pilgrims worked “to create a Holy …

Review: 'Godly Ambition: John Stott And The Evangelical Movement', William Vance Trollinger

William Vance Trollinger Jr.

In 2005, Time included John Stott in its list of the world’s 100 most influential people, describing Stott as both a “touchstone of authentic biblical scholarship that has scarcely been paralleled since the days of the 16th-century European Reformers” as well as “a significant factor in the explosive growth of Christianity in parts of the Third World.” With this, Alister Chapman begins Godly Ambition, a compact analysis of Stott’s career that certainly does justice to this extraordinarily significant figure in late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century global evangelicalism.

Thanks in good part to Chapman’s access to Stott’s personal papers (Stott died …

Review: 'Anabaptist World Usa', William Trollinger

Bill Trollinger

No abstract provided.

Review: 'Gods Of War, Gods Of Peace: How The Meeting Of Native And Colonial Religions Shaped Early America', William Vance Trollinger

William Vance Trollinger Jr.

In this ambitious and interesting book, Russell Bourne, former editor at American Heritage and author of The Red King’s Rebellion: Racial Politics in New England, argues that “the cultural contact between Anglo-Americans and Native Americans ... becomes most understandable when seen as an intrinsically religious encounter” (p. 3) that had “immense consequences for [both] cultures” (p. xii). Bourne covers the two centuries from the 1630s through the 1830s, shedding light on familiar and less familiar religious figures such as Handsome Lake, Hobomock, John Eliot, Jonathan Edwards, Samuel Kirkland, and Shikellamy.

Bourne’s sympathies are clearly with moments and places, including …

Review: 'God's Own Party: The Making Of The Christian Right', William Vance Trollinger

William Vance Trollinger Jr.

There has been no end of predictions that the demise of the Religious Right is imminent. Over the past three decades, proof of its impending collapse has included the televangelist scandals, Pat Robertson’s failure to secure the Republican presidential nomination, the election and re-election of Bill Clinton, and the emergence of “young” evangelicals who refuse to toe the Religious Right line (this one keeps popping up).

The latest version involves the notion that economically focused libertarians of the Tea Party will inevitably find themselves in heated conflict with evangelical and fundamentalist social conservatives, thus challenging the power of the Religious …

Review: 'More Desired Than Our Owne Salvation: The Roots Of Christian Zionism', William Vance Trollinger

William Vance Trollinger Jr.

The degree of American “affinity with the State of Israel,” to use Robert O. Smith’s language in his enlightening book, is simply remarkable. As Smith documents, polling results over the last few decades make abundantly clear that American Christians — led by white evangelicals — consistently and overwhelmingly side with Israelis and against Palestinians. Regarding U.S. policies in the Middle East, while polls show that a majority of people throughout the rest of the world — including, as revealed in a 2003 poll, Israelis themselves — believe that American foreign policy is unfairly tilted toward Israel, Americans maintain that U.S. …

Prescient Pacifists, William Vance Trollinger

William Vance Trollinger Jr.

Reviews of two books:

• Patricia Applebaum, Kingdom to Commune: Protestant Pacifist Culture between World War I and the Vietnam Era.
• Joseph Kosek, Acts of Conscience: Christian Nonviolence and Modern American Democracy.

The Enlightenment has bequeathed us — Americans more than anyone else — the conviction that history is a story of progress. Such a notion seems ludicrous when one considers the violence of the contemporary world. As the British historian Eric Hobsbawm observes in his brilliant work The Age of Extremes, the 20th century "was without doubt the most murderous century of which we have record, both by the scale, …

No More Death Row, William Vance Trollinger

William Vance Trollinger Jr.

Reviews of two books:

• Rachel King, Don’t Kill in Our Names: Families of Murder Victims Speak Out Against the Death Penalty.
• Scott Turow, Ultimate Punishment: A Lawyer’s Reflections on Dealing with the Death Penalty.

In 2000, Gov. George Ryan of Illinois declared a moratorium on executions. He was horrified that innocent men had nearly been executed on his watch, and he was impressed by stories in the Chicago Tribune detailing the problems of his state's capital punishment system. Ryan established a commission to study the system and propose reforms. In 2002 the commission issued its report, which included 85 …

Review: Darren Dochuk's 'From Bible Belt To Sun Belt', William Vance Trollinger

William Vance Trollinger Jr.

In From Bible Belt to Sun Belt, Darren Dochuk cogently observes that there is “a general tendency in political history to treat religion as an historical agent that pops up for a short time, makes some noise, surprises some people and scares others, but then suddenly disappears again to wait for its next release” (p. xxii). As a result, when it comes to the Religious Right, there has been a scholarly obsession with trying to explain its “sudden” emergence in the 1970s (an enterprise that often includes predictions of its imminent disappearance).

Review: Jacob Dorn's 'Socialism And Christianity In Early 20th-Century America', William Vance Trollinger

William Vance Trollinger Jr.

During the 2004 presidential campaign, there will be much talk by television and radio evangelists of the urgent necessity for "Christian voters" to go to the polls on Election Day. It will be assumed — by the preachers, by their audiences, and by the general media — that these "Christian voters" will vote Republican (implying, of course, that only "non-Christian voters" would even consider pulling the lever for the Democratic candidate).

Jacob Dorn summarizes this state of affairs in his introduction to Socialism and Christianity: "The rise of the Religious Right" has "overshadow[ed] the potential of American Christianity to stimulate …