David M. Oshinsky

A history of the 1950s polio epidemic that caused panic in the United States examines the competition between Salk and Sabin to find the first vaccine and its implications for such issues as government testing of new drugs and manufacturers' liability.

An American Story

Polio

Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice

Worse than Slavery

With a storyteller's eye for the dramatic, presentation of fact, and insightful interpretation of human complexity, Oshinsky uncovers the layers of myth to reveal the true Joe McCarthy and the forces that launched him to prominence and decline.

The World of Joe McCarthy

A Conspiracy So Immense

Edward L. Ayers

Lewis L. Gould

Jean R. Soderlund

Written by top scholars of American History, AMERICAN PASSAGES, BRIEF SECOND EDITION examines U.S. history the way people live?in the flow of real time. Rather than pursuing one topic (such as politics, culture, society, reform, the military, or economics) at a time, each chapter of the text interweaves important themes and issues into one clear narrative. Through this method of presentation as well as through the primary source material in every chapter, students can observe the many ways that events, movements, and groups of people have served to shape history and can learn to make connections between these themes and issues. This revision includes expanded review materials and pedagogy to help students get through the course as well as a free AMERICAN PASSAGES Book Companion Website created by Ed Ayers. This site includes chapter-by-chapter quizzing, interactive maps, videos, audio, and links to over 400 readings.

A History of the United States, Volume I: to 1877, Brief

American Passages

Richard Patrick McCormick

Daniel Horn

In 1935, the abrupt dismissal of a German professor at Rutgers University received national attention, arousing the interest of the FBI, ACLU and N.J. state officials, and inciting a university hearing and report. Twenty-six-year-old Lienhard Bergel's contract was terminated, allegedly because of lack of funding, but in fact Bergel's politics clashed with department chair Friedrich J. Hauptmann's pro-Nazi views. Bergel's departure from Rutgers occurred amid a flurry of controversy that polarized students and administrators alike. Alan Silver, who had been a student activist in 1935, republicized the Bergel incident in 1985, prompting this volume. The authors, all Rutgers history faculty, here offer a chronicle of the school as well as re-create the political climate of those earlier times. However, a larger story never emerges from their assembled details. Vital matters, such as freedom of speech, the politics of academia and the activities of student peace groups, are obscured by a long roster of names and dates. Bergel's involvement with the FBI (he gave the agency information on Hauptmann's Nazi activities) is considered only in passing. Hauptmann's collaboration with the Nazis, a fascinating story, and his eventual repatriation during the war to Germany, is told too briefly. Though perhaps a document useful to Rutgers academics, the book is unlikely to command widespread attention. Illustrations not seen by PW.

The Case of the Nazi Professor

A Pulitzer Prize-winning historian takes a new and closer look at the Supreme Court's controversial and much-debated stance on capital punishment in the landmark case of Furman v. Georgia.

Furman V. Georgia and the Death Penalty in Modern America

Capital Punishment on Trial

Written by top scholars of American History, AMERICAN PASSAGES, BRIEF SECOND EDITION examines U.S. history the way people live--in the flow of real time. Rather than pursuing one topic (such as politics, culture, society, reform, the military, or economics) at a time, each chapter of the text interweaves important themes and issues into one clear narrative. Through this method of presentation as well as through the primary source material in every chapter, students can observe the many ways that events, movements, and groups of people have served to shape history and can learn to make connections between these themes and issues. This revision includes expanded review materials and pedagogy to help students get through the course as well as a free AMERICAN PASSAGES Book Companion Website created by Ed Ayers. This site includes chapter-by-chapter quizzing, interactive maps, videos, audio, and links to over 400 readings.

A History of the United States Since 1865, Compact Edition

In this sensitively told tale of suffering, brutality, and inhumanity, Worse Than Slavery is an epic history of race and punishment in the deepest South from emancipation to the civil rights era—and beyond. Immortalized in blues songs and movies like Cool Hand Luke and The Defiant Ones, Mississippi’s infamous Parchman State Penitentiary was, in the pre-civil rights south, synonymous with cruelty. Now, noted historian David Oshinsky gives us the true story of the notorious prison, drawing on police records, prison documents, folklore, blues songs, and oral history, from the days of cotton-field chain gangs to the 1960s, when Parchman was used to break the wills of civil rights workers who journeyed south on Freedom Rides.

David M. Oshinsky

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