Bøger udgivet af University Press of Kansas

Presents a biography of a much-loved architectural landmark - Spooner Hall, the sixth building to be erected at the University of Kansas. Carol Shankel and Barbara Watkins bring together photographs and documents that trace the building from its construction in 1893 to its current use, highlighting the many colorful personalities associated with the building along the way.

When Congress endorsed aid to schools in 1965, the idea that the federal government had any responsibility for public education was controversial. This book explains why federal role in schools continued to expand in post-LBJ years as the reform impulse became detached from electoral politics, centering instead on courts and federal bureaucracy.

Kansas is not only the Sunflower State, it's the very heart of America's heartland. It is a place of extremes in politics as well as climate, where ambitious and energetic people have attempted to put ideals into practice-a state that has come a long way since being identified primarily with John Brown and his exploits. Craig Miner has written a complete and balanced history of Kansas, capturing the state's colorful past and dynamic present as he depicts the persistence of contrasting images of and attitudes toward the state throughout its 150 years. A work combining serious scholarship with great readability, it encompasses everything from the Kansas-Nebraska Act to the evolution-creationism controversy, emphasizing the historical moments that were pivotal in forming the culture of the state and the diverse group of people who have contributed to its history. Kansas: The History of the Sunflower State is the first new state history to appear in over twenty-five years and the most thoroughly researched ever published. Written to enlighten general readers within and well beyond the state's borders, it offers coverage not found in previous histories: greater attention to its cities-notably Wichita-and to its south central and western regions, accounts of business history, contributions of women and minorities, and environmental concerns. It presents the dark as well as the bright side of Kansas progressivism and is the first Kansas history to deal with the post-World War II era in any significant detail. Craig Miner has spent almost forty years researching, teaching, and writing Kansas history and has dug deeply into primary sources-especially gubernatorial papers-that shed new light on the state. That research has enabled him to assemble a wider cast of characters and more entertaining collection of quotations than found in earlier histories and to better show how individual initiative and entrepreneurial aspirations have profoundly influenced the creation of present-day Kansas. Ranging from the days of cattle and railroads to the era of oil and agribusiness, this history situates the state in its own terms rather than as a sidebar to a larger American epic. Miner brings to its pages an identifiable Kansas character to preserve what is distinctive about the state's identity for future generations, echoing what one Kansan said over half a century ago: "Kansas is simply Kansas. May she never be tempted to become anything else."

"A fascinating array of information on everything from how to prepare a buffalo robe to what one could expect to find in a small trading post on the south Platte River in the 1830s. Portrays the coming together of a great nation."" - Philadelphia Inquirer.

A uniquely informed study of a critical but virtually forgotten Soviet military operation in World War II, Operation Don's Main Attack offers a fresh perspective on the nature of the twentieth century's most terrible of wars.

Howard Ruede was twenty-two years old in March of 1877 when he rode on a freight wagon into Osborne City, a community in west-central Kansas. A young man of courage, common sense, and independence, Ruede was filled with the optimism and determination typical of the men and women who took up the challenge of homesteading on the prairie. Brought together by economist John Ise and first published in 1937, Sod-House Days is a collection of the letters Ruede wrote to his family in Pennsylvania chronicling his first year in Kansas. In minute detail these letters show the hard, wearying work faced by homesteaders in the 1870s, their almost unbelievable poverty, the hardships of poor food, inadequate clothing, crowding, unsanitary conditions, the lack of decent drinking water, the bedbugs and fleas, flies and mosquitoes. We see Ruede struggling to stay out of debt, walking miles to pick up the mail or to visit a neighbor, working until his bare feet are rubbed raw by the wheat stubble of the fields, going without meat because he hasn't been able to kill a jackrabbit, cooking biscuits in a kettle over his sod fireplace. Taken together, his observations constitute a careful and graphic picture of the pioneer community in which he lived, one that joins recent studies such as Sandra Myres's Westering Women and the Frontier Experience in presenting an accurate, if brutal, picture of life on the western frontier. In a perceptive new foreword, sociologist Scott G. McNall considers the context within which the story of Howard Ruede unfolded. He delineates the forces and factors that contributed to the rapid settlement of the Great Plains. He reads the dominant themes that run through Ruede's letters: an almost religious faith in progress and hard work, and a tremendous concern for the idea of community. He also addresses a central question: What made these people stay? McNall writes, "The value of these materials has been not at all reduced by the passage of time. . . . [This] is the story of an ordinary person with heroic dimensions. Reading these letters, we see what values people had which allowed them to try, and then try again, after they had seen their efforts destroyed by drought, grasshoppers, prairie fires, and other disasters. . . . It is a story of struggle with the environment, of creative adaption to circumstance, of people as active participants in creating the society around them."

"An admirable series of succinct critical histories."

The epic story of how a few disorganized and politically naive Kansans, realizing they were unfairly under attack, rolled up their sleeves, went looking for fights and ended up making friends in one of the country's most hostile states.

The time has come for us to collectively reexamineand ultimately move pastthe concept of sustainability in environmental and natural resources law and management. The continued invocation of sustainability in policy discussions ignores the emerging reality of the Anthropocene, which is creating a world characterized by extreme complexity, radical uncertainty, and unprecedented change. From a legal and policy perspective, we must face the impossibility of even defininglet alone pursuinga goal of sustainability in such a world.Melinda Harm Benson and Robin Kundis Craig propose resilience as a more realistic and workable communitarian approach to environmental governance. American environmental and natural resources laws date to the early 1970s, when the steady-state Balance of Nature model was in voguea model that ecologists have long since rejected, even before adding the complication of climate change. In the Anthropocene, a new era in which humans are the key agent of change on the planet, these laws (and American culture more generally) need to embrace new narratives of complex ecosystems and humans' role as part of themnarratives exemplified by cultural tricksters and resilience theory. Updating Aldo Leopolds vision of nature and humanity as a single community for the Anthropocene, Benson and Craig argue that the narrative of resilience integrates humans back into the complex social and ecological system known as Earth. As such, it empowers humans to act for a better future through law and policy despite the very real challenges of climate changeMelinda Harm Benson is an associate professor in the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies at the University of New Mexico.

Of the hundreds of thousands of soldiers who died in the Civil War, two-thirds, by some estimates, were felled by disease; untold others were lost to accidents, murder, suicide, sunstroke, and drowning. Meanwhile thousands of civilians in both the north and south perishedin factories, while caught up in battles near their homes, and in other circumstances associated with wartime production and supply. These inglorious passages, no less than the deaths of soldiers in combat, devastated the armies in the field and families and communities at home. Inglorious Passages for the first time gives these noncombat deaths due consideration.In letters, diaries, obituaries, and other accounts, eminent Civil War historian Brian Steel Wills finds the powerful and poignant stories of fatal accidents and encounters and collateral civilian deaths that occurred in the factories and fields of the Union and the Confederacy from 1861 to 1865. Wills retrieves these stories from obscurity and the cold calculations of statistics to reveal the grave toll these losses exacted on soldiers and civilians, families and society. In its intimate details and its broad scope, his book demonstrates that for those who served and those who supported them, noncombat fatalities were as significant as battle deaths in impressing the full force of the American Civil War on the people called upon to live through it. With the publication of Inglorious Passages, those who paid the supreme sacrifice, regardless of situation or circumstance, will at last be included in the final tabulation of the nations bloodiest conflict.

Think of Kansas City and you'll probably think of barbecue, jazz, or the Chiefs. But for James Shortridge, this heartland city is more than the sum of its cultural beacons. In Kansas City and How It Grew, 1822-201, he traces the historical geography of a place that has developed over 200 years from a cowtown on the bend of the Missouri River into a metropolis straddling two states.

The Wehrmacht's Last Stand is a gripping account of German military campaigns during the final phase of World War II, paying close attention to the officers who planned and led them.

Ashton B. Carter said when announcing that the Pentagon would open all combat jobs to women, "I made a commitment to building America's force of the future. In the twenty-first century, that requires drawing strength from the broadest possible pool of talent." William Taylor chronicles and analyses the long and ever-changing history of that often contentious and controversial effort.

With electoral votes disputed in three states, a Democrat winning the popular vote, and the Supreme Court stepping in to overrule Florida court decisions, the presidential election of 1876 was an eerie precursor to that of 2000. This offers a fresh interpretation of this disputed election, not merely to rehash claims of fraud but to explain why it was so close.

Not far from Chattanooga in northern Georgia, the Confederacy won one of its most decisive battles at Chickamauga. This guide uses firsthand accounts to illustrate how this skirmish, only two days long, turned into the second-bloodiest battle of the Civil War with over 34,000 Union and Confederate soldiers killed, wounded, or captured.

On the campaign trail, Barack Obama spoke often about his constitutional principles. In particular, he objected to George W. Bush's claim to certain "inherent" presidential powers that could not be checked by Congress or the judiciary. After his inauguration, how did President Obama's constitutional principles fare? That is the question Louis Fisher explores in this book.

In the American imagination ""the West"" denotes a border - between civilization and wilderness, past and future, native and newcomer - and its lawlessness is legendary. In fact, there was an abundance of law in the West, as in all borderland regions of vying and overlapping claims, jurisdictions, and domains. It is this legal borderland that Beyond the Borders of the Law explores.

A one-volume interpretive history of the Supreme Court written for the general reader. Demonstrates how the justices have shaped the law, and how the Court has shaped our nation.

In the American imagination ""the West"" denotes a border - between civilization and wilderness, past and future, native and newcomer - and its lawlessness is legendary. In fact, there was an abundance of law in the West, as in all borderland regions of vying and overlapping claims, jurisdictions, and domains. It is this legal borderland that Beyond the Borders of the Law explores.

Provides a thorough study of the policies and politics of the presidents from Johnson to Barack Obama - what they did right and how they went wrong - in over half a century of fighting poverty. While all of these presidents have helped produce meaningful changes in the lives of America's underclass, their setbacks have been at least as notable as their successes.

On the night of November 29, 1988, near the impoverished Marlborough neighborhood in south Kansas City, an explosion at a construction site killed six of the citys firefighters. It was a clear case of arson, and five people from Marlborough were duly convicted of the crime. But for veteran crime writer and crusading editor J. Patrick OConnor, the factsor a lack of themdidnt add up. Justice on Fire is O'Connors detailed account of the terrible explosion that led to the firefighters deaths and the terrible injustice that followed.Justice on Fire describes a misguided eight-year investigation propelled by an overzealous Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) agent keen to retire; a mistake-riddled case conducted by a combative assistant US attorney willing to use compromised snitch witnesses and unwilling to admit contrary evidence; and a sentence of life without parole pronounced by a prosecution-favoring judge. In short, an abuse of government power and a travesty of justice. OConnors own investigation, which uncovered evidence of witness tampering, intimidation, and prosecutorial misconduct, helped give rise to a front-page series of articles in the Kansas City Staronly to prompt a whitewashing inquiry by the Department of Justice that exonerated the lead ATF agent and named other possible perpetrators who remain unidentified and unindicted. OConnor extends his scrutiny to this cover-up and arrives at a startling conclusion suggesting that the case of the Marlborough Five is far from closed.Journalists are not supposed to make the news. But faced with a gross injustice, and seeing no other remedy, OConnor felt he must step in. Justice on Fire is such an intervention.

For Ernest Ernie Garcia, the American dream began in Mexico more than a hundred years ago. Ernie, raised in Kansas, became the US Senate sergeant at arms and escorted President Ronald Reagan to the podium to deliver the State of the Union address. After the presidents speech, Ernie reflected on his familys long and arduous journey from Zacatecas to El Paso to Kansas as well as on his presence in the Capitol alongside the president, Congress, and the Supreme Court. He was certain his ancestors never imagined that their dreams would lead him to the White House.Ernies experience as sergeant at arms is just one chapter in the inspiring life story told in this book. Drawing upon oral histories recounted by family members, friends, and Ernie himself, Dennis Raphael Garcia reaches back to the travails and grit of great-grandfather Pedro as he made his way to the American heartland with his son Jose. Like so many immigrants with courage and determination, they found great hardship but also great opportunity. A decade of field labor, the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl, and two world wars laid the groundwork for Ernies story. Marine, Public Servant, Kansan describes how this Mexican American boy, fatherless at a young age and facing discrimination, found his way to a place alongside a senator and a president through hard work and educationand some basketball. Along the way he realized his own ambition to become an officer in the Marine Corps. The book follows Ernie through both Iraq wars to his service, even in retirement, as superintendent of the Kansas State Highway Patrol.In Marine, Public Servant, Kansan, the remarkable character of not just one Kansan son of Mexican immigrants, but also the immigrant experience itself is eloquently and poignantly weaved into the story of Ernie and his familys American dream.

Award winning photographer Larry Schwarm tells stories through pictures about Kansas and its farmers; an art and science collaboration.

A comprehensive political and legal history of the Medal of Honor that charts both the changes in qualifications and its increasing prestige over two centuries.

Five months after the election of Abraham Lincoln, which had revealed the fracturing state of the nation, Confederates fired on Fort Sumter and the fight for the Union began in earnest. This documentary reader offers a firsthand look at the constitutional debates that consumed the country in those fraught five months.

Operation Barbarossa, Hitler's plan for invading the Soviet Union, has by now become a familiar tale of overreach, with the Germans blinded to their coming defeat by their initial victory, and the Soviet Union pushing back from the brink of destruction with courageous exploits both reckless and relentless. And while much of this version of the story is true, Frank Ellis tells us in Barbarossa 1941, it also obscures several important historical truths that alter our understanding of the campaign. In this new and intensive investigation of Operation Barbarossa, Ellis draws on a wealth of documents declassified over the past twenty years to challenge the conventional treatment of a critical chapter in the history of World War II.Ellis's close reading of an exceptionally wide range of German and Russian sources leads to a reevaluation of Soviet intelligence assessments of Hitler's intentions; Stalin's complicity in his nation's slippage into existential slaughter; and the influence of the Stalinist regime's reputation for brutalityand a fear of Stalin's expansionist inclinationson the launching and execution of Operation Barbarossa. Ellis revisits two major controversies relating to Barbarossathe Soviet pre-emptive strike thesis put forward in Viktor Suvorov's book Icebreaker; and the view of the infamous Commissar Order, dictating the execution of a large group of Soviet POWs, as a unique piece of Nazi malevolence. Ellis also analyzes the treatment of Barbarossa in the work of three Soviet-Russian writersVasilii Grossman, Alexander Bek, and Konstantin Simonovand in the first-ever translation of the diary kept by a German soldier in 20th Panzer Division, brings the campaign back to the daily realities of dangers and frustrations encountered by German troops.

Examines the ideological development of American democratic thought in the context of settler colonialism, a distinct form of colonialism aimed at the appropriation of Native land rather than the exploitation of Native labour. In its focus on the disavowal of Native dispossession in democratic thought, the book provides a new perspective on the problematic relationship between race and democracy.

The upper Arkansas River courses through the heart of America from its headwaters near the Continental Divide above Leadville, Colorado, to Arkansas City, just above the Kansas-Oklahoma border. Max McCoy embarked on a trip of 742 miles in search of the river's unique story. Part adventure and part reflection, steeped in the natural and cultural history of the Arkansas Valley, Elevations is McCoys account of that journey. Going by kayak when he canby Jeep, on foot, or by other means when he has toMcCoy takes us with him, navigating the Arkansas River as it reveals its nature and tests his own. Along the way, and when he isnt battling the current for his overturned kayak; braving a frigid Christmas Eve along the river; or joining the search for a drowning victim, he steps out to explore the world beyond the rivers banks. Here for instance is Camp Amache, where Japanese Americans were imprisoned during World War II. Here is Ludlow, where thirteen women and children died in a standoff between striking coal miners and the militia in 1914. Farther along we find Sand Creek, site of a massacre by US soldiers in 1864, and, uncomfortably close, Garden City, where white supremacists were charged with planning a terror attack on Somali refugees in 2016.Whether traveling back in time, pausing in the present, or looking forward, Elevations captures the Arkansas River in its thrilling moments and placid stretches, in its natural splendor and degradation at human hands. The book shows us the river as a flowing repository of human history and, in the telling of this gifted writer, as a life-changing experience.

Fully explores the most sustained, intensive use of psychological operations (PSYOP) in American history. Informed by the author's firsthand experience of such operations elsewhere, this account of the battle for ""hearts and minds"" in Vietnam offers rare insight into the art and science of propaganda as a military tool in the twentieth century.