History Commons^™

The Fall Of The 1977 Phillies: How A Baseball Team's Collapse Sank A City's Spirit, Mitchell J. Nathanson

Mitchell J Nathanson

Too often, the Philadelphia sports fan has been dismissed as a lout, a boorish dolt immune to reason, his vocabulary whittled down to a singular “boo.” This is particularly true when it comes to Phillies fans, who are more likely to turn on their team than any other in the city. Although the Eagles, Sixers and Flyers may hear it from the rafters when they’re not going well, only the Phils will hear it when they are. The strained relationship between the city and the Phillies, however, has deep historical and sociological roots; roots that directly correlate with the city’s …

Festivals And Plays In Late Medieval Britain, Clifford Davidson

Clifford Davidson

The most comprehensive survey to date of medieval festival playing in Britain, this study presents an inclusive view of the drama in the British Isles. It offers detailed readings of individual plays-including the little studied Bodley plays, among others - as well as a summary of what is known of their production. Organized around the rituals of the liturgical seasons, the book clarifies the relationship between liturgical feast and dramatic celebration.

Politics, Economy And Society In Bourbon Central America, Jordana Dym, Christophe Belaubre

Jordana Dym

Cloth. 320 pages. Illustrations: 4 b/w photos, 1 drawing, 7 maps, 2 tables

Politics, Economy, and Society in Bourbon Central America, 1759-1821 examines how the Spanish policies known broadly as the Bourbon Reforms affected Central American social, economic, and political institutions. Although historians have devoted significant attention to the purpose and impact of these reforms in Spain and some of Spain's other New World colonies, this book is the first to explore their impact on Central America.

These reforms profoundly changed aspects of Central America's politics and society; however, these essays reveal that changes in the region were shaped both …

The Climate Engineers: Playing God To Save The Planet, James Fleming

James R. Fleming

As alarm over global warming spreads, a radical idea is gaining momentum. Forget cuts in greenhouse-gas emissions, some scientists argue. Find a technological fix. Bounce sunlight back into space by pumping reflective nanoparticles into the atmosphere. Launch mirrors into orbit around the earth. Create a “planetary thermostat.” But what sounds like science fiction is actually an old story. For more than a century, scientists, soldiers, and charlatans have hatched schemes to manipulate the weather and climate. Like them, today’s aspiring climate engineers wildly exaggerate what is possible, and they scarcely consider political, military, and ethical implications of attempting to manage …

Thoughts On Creative Teaching In The Undergraduate Classroom, Jeffrey Shepherd

Jeffrey P Shepherd

This article discusses several innovative approaches to teaching U.S. History in undergraduate classrooms. It argues that history teachers can engage students in dialogues about the past if they use more interactive forms of pedagogy. Role-playing, historical re-enactment, debate, and other creative formats will simultaneously enrich the classroom experience and strengthen students critical thinking and writing skills. Teachers interested in content do not have to sacrifice "the facts" for dynamic and stimulating--even exciting--approaches to U.S. history.

Originalism & Early Civil Search Statutes: The Misunderstood History Of Suspicion & Probable Cause, Fabio Arcila, Jr.

Fabio Arcila Jr.

Originalist analyses of the Framers’ views about governmental search power have devoted insufficient attention to the civil search statutes they promulgated. What attention has been paid, primarily as part of what I term the “conventional account,” has it that the Framers were divided about how accessible search remedies should be. This article explains why this conventional account is mostly wrong, and explores the lessons to be learned from the statutory choices the Framers made with regard to search and seizure law.

In enacting civil search statutes, the Framers chose to depart from common law standards and instead largely followed the …