Books

Statue of Liberty Book Celebrates 125 Years

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A new book written in celebration of the Statue of Liberty’s 125th birthday (October 28, 2011) has been published to support projects of The Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation. The Statue of Liberty: A Symbol of Hope and Freedom for 125 Years, is a commemorative, photo-and-fact-filled journal that spans the statue’s beginnings as an idea of French sculptor Frederic Auguste Bartholdi, to becoming a symbol of welcome to millions of immigrants, her quirky role in American pop culture, and the historic 1986 restoration.

The book is offered for $9.99 through the Ellis Island online gift shop. Proceeds support the The Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation.

Note: Books noticed on this site have been provided by the publishers.

Ten Tea Parties: Protests that History Forgot

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Everyone knows about the Boston Tea Party, where angry colonists hurled 92,000 pounds of tea into Boston Harbor, but few realize it was part of a larger movement that swept across the colonies through the late 1700s. New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maine, North Carolina all had their own versions of the now celebrated theft and destruction of private property protest. A new book by historian Joseph Cummins, Ten Tea Parties: Patriotic Protests that History Forgot, (Quirk Books, 2012) highlights some of those protests, and includes an appendix with eight more.

Cummins includes the story of Philadelphian Samuel Ayres, who was nearly tarred and feathered by a mob of 8,000 patriots, and that of Annapolis, MD, where 2,320 pounds of tea was burned to ashes. He also includes a short history of the East India Company, which was the world’s most powerful trading company for 250 years and relates how the men who participated in the Boston Tea Party kept their identities hidden for over 40 years fearing civil suit from the East India Company.

Note: Books noticed on this site have been provided by the publishers. Purchases made through this Amazon link help support this site.

Richard Ketchum, 89, American Revolution Author

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Richard M. Ketchum, an author and editor who writings include Saratoga: Turning Point of America’s Revolutionary War and Divided Loyalties : How the American Revolution Came to New York, died on January 12 at a retirement home in Shelburne, Vermont. He was 89 and until four years ago had lived on his nearly 1,000-acre farm, Saddleback, in Dorset, VT.

Author David McCullough describes “like Shelby Foote unfolding the drama of the Civil War, Richard M. Ketchum writes of the Revolution as if he had been there . . . No novelist could create characters more memorable than the protagonists on both the American and British sides”

I had the pleasure of meeting Mr Ketchum, ten years ago in Olympia Hall in Schuylerville. He volunteered to speak one night as one of the activities commemorating the 225th Anniversary of the Battles of Saratoga. He and his wife were very generous with their time. He mentioned that night that there were others in the room that knew more about the Battles. I remember thinking then that they may be knowledgeable, however there is not a better writer and storyteller of this history than Richard Ketchum. I know that my community and all those with an interest in the American Revolution will be forever grateful for the writing of Richard Ketchum.

To learn more about Richard Ketchum visit this The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer Transcript

A full obituary can be read in the New York Times.

Sean Kelleher is the Historian for the Town of Saratoga and Village of Victory in the Upper Hudson Valley. He has a particular interest in colonial history, being active as a reenactor for 34 years and has served as a Commissioner on the New York State French and Indian War 250th Anniversary Commemoration Commission.

American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World

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On November 25, 1783, the last British troops pulled out of New York City, bringing the American Revolution to an end. Patriots celebrated their departure and the confirmation of U.S. independence. But for tens of thousands of American loyalists, the British evacuation spelled worry, not jubilation. What would happen to them in the new United States? Would they and their families be safe?

Facing grave doubts about their futures, some sixty thousand loyalists—one in forty members of the American population—decided to leave their homes and become refugees elsewhere in the British Empire. They sailed for Britain, for Canada, for Jamaica, and for the Bahamas- some ventured as far as Sierra Leone and India. Award-winning historian Maya Jasanoff’s new book Liberty’s Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World (Knopf, 2011), chronicles their stories.

Jasanoff re-creates the journeys of ordinary individuals whose lives were overturned by extraordinary events. She tells of refugees like Elizabeth Johnston, a young mother from Georgia, who spent nearly thirty years as a migrant, searching for a home in Britain, Jamaica, and Canada. And of David George, a black preacher born into slavery, who found freedom and faith in the British Empire, and eventually led his followers to seek a new Jerusalem in Sierra Leone.

Mohawk leader Joseph Brant resettled his people under British protection in Ontario, while the adventurer William Augustus Bowles tried to shape a loyalist Creek state in Florida. For all these people and more, it was the British Empire—not the United States—that held the promise of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Yet as they dispersed across the empire, the loyalists also carried things from their former homes, revealing an enduring American influence on the wider British world.

Note: Books noticed on this site have been provided by the publishers. Purchases made through this Amazon link help support this site.

New Book Focuses on The Moro War

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After defeating Spain in Cuba and in the Philippines in 1898, the U.S. purchased the Philippines, Puerto Rico and several other islands (like Guam and Cuba) from the Spanish. However, Filipinos and other peoples of the archipelago (notably the region’s Muslims or Moros) had been fighting a long and bloody resistance against Spanish control, and had no intention of becoming a colony of another imperialist power. That war lasted for more than 10 years, encompasing both the Philippine-American War (1899-1906) and often simultaneous conflict usually known as the Moro Insurrection (1902-1913). James R. Arnold’s The Moro War: How America Battled a Muslim Insurgency in the Philippine Jungle, 1902-1913 is a significant new addition to our understanding of the Moro War.

After 1902 the American civil government regarded the remaining guerrillas as mere bandits, though the fighting continued. The Moros on Mindanao and on the Sulu Archipelago, suspicious of both Christian Filipino insurrectionists and the Americans, remained for the most part neutral. In August 1899, an agreement had been signed between General John C. Bates, representing the United States government, and the sultan of Sulu, Jamal-ul Kiram II, pledging a policy of noninterference on the part of the United States.

In 1902 serious trouble began with the Moros, when the U.S. Army occupied former Spanish garrison points, the Moros began to raid villages, attack soldiers, and otherwise resist American jurisdiction. In 1903, however, a Moro province was established by the American authorities, and a more forward policy was implemented: slavery was outlawed, schools that taught a non-Muslim curriculum were established, and local governments that challenged the authority of traditional community leaders were organized. A new legal system replaced the sharia, or Islamic law. United States rule, even more than that of the Spanish, was seen as a challenge to Islam. Moro armed resistance grew.

Between July 1902 and December 1904, and again late in 1905, the Army dispatched a series of expeditions into the interior of Mindanao to destroy Moro strongholds, which they did. In May 1905, March 1906, and June 1913, the US Army had to cope with disorders on the island of Jolo, a Moro stronghold. During May 1905 Pala and some of his followers were killed- the remainder, gathered in a volcanic crater, surrendered to American forces.

In 1907 (the same year the Netherlands finally subdued northern Sumatra), the Sultan of Sonsorol, Pak Harjanto Abdul Rahman Moro I, staged a tragic and futile uprising against colonial forces. It is said his followers believed themselves magically invulnerable to bullets. The Sultan and other conspirators were executed, the title abolished, and the island sank into depression, somnolence, lassitude and obscurity. In mid-June 1913 Moros at Bagsac were beaten, essentially ending the Moro struggle for independence. The Moro province remained under United States military rule until 1913, by which time the major Muslim groups had been subjugated.

Note: Books noticed on this site have been provided by the publishers. Purchases made through this Amazon link help support this site.

Chris Pryslopski: The Hudson River Valley Review

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As Associate Editor of The Hudson River Valley Review, published by The Hudson River Valley Institute (HRVI), I get to explore the region that I call home and to share these finds with our readers. While our website allows us to be as expansive as our associates and interns are interested in being, it is the journal that I find most rewarding with its approximately 150 pages per issue that forces us to focus our interests and energies into a concise product every six months. The Hudson River Valley Review is published each spring and autumn, alternating between thematic and open issues.

Founded in 1984 at Bard College as The Hudson Valley Regional Review, it almost went out of print in 2001. HRVI negotiated to assume publication in 2002. We changed the name and added a number of features, but it continues in the spirit that it was founded. In addition to a wide variety of topics covered in the open issues, we have produced journals covering the American Revolution, the Civil War, Landscape Architecture, the recent Hudson-Fulton-Champlain Quadricentennial Celebration, and innovation and commerce. We have also worked with guest-editors to produce issues dedicated to the writings of Edith Wharton and John Burroughs as well as to the legacy of Eleanor Roosevelt.

While the thematic issues stand well as overviews of certain aspects of the region, it is often more fun to assemble the open issues, comprised of those submitted articles that pass peer review on any variety of topics in a range of disciplines. Our Spring 2006 issue included articles that discussed the seventeenth-century Leislerian Rebellion, the nineteenth-century voyage of a Dutch visitor from Brooklyn to the Catskill Mountain House (including a portion of his translated journal), and the Twentieth-Century creation of Black Rock Forest as an educational preserve.

Whenever a new issue is released, we place a PDF of the introduction, History Forums, New and Noteworthy books, and full reviews on our website. We do not post the main articles until the issue goes out of print.

You can find a list of the last ten years of back issues online at: http://www.hudsonrivervalley.org/review/back_issues.html.

We have an online index of articles going back to 1984 which we update with every new issue that comes out as well: http://www.hudsonrivervalley.org/review/indices.html.

We also received copies of most of The Hudson Valley Regional Review when we took over publication, and have many of those as well as our own back-issues still available. There is a list of out-of-print issues on our subscription page: http://www.hudsonrivervalley.org/review/subscribe.html.

Chris Pryslopski is Program Director of Marist College’s Hudson River Valley Institute and Associate Editor of the Hudson River Valley Review.

Cayuga Museum’s History Book Club Selections Set

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The History Book Club at the Cayuga Museum meets on the first Thursday of the month, at 7:00 p.m. at the Museum. Members discuss non-fiction works of history on local, national and global themes. Participation is free and readers can choose to attend any or all of the monthly meetings. Participants met recently to choose the books for the next several months.

February 2: 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created by Charles Mann. Mann explores the global repercussions that followed European contact with the Americas: showing how European honeybees and earthworms remade New World landscapes- how New World corn, potatoes, and fertilizer ignited Eurasian population booms- how Old World diseases prompted an eruption of slavery in the Western Hemisphere- how Latin American silver undermined China’s Ming Dynasty- and how the decimation of Indian peoples changed the world’s climate.

March 1: Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize. In this groundbreaking work, Diamond offers a convincing explanation of the way the modern world came to be and stunningly dismantles racially based theories of human history.

April 5: The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815 by Richard White. This widely acknowledged classic and Pulitzer Prize finalist tells how Europeans and Indians met, first regarding each other as alien, as other, as virtually nonhuman, and how between 1650 and 1815 they constructed a common, mutually comprehensible world in the region around the Great Lakes. Here the older worlds of the Algonquians and of various Europeans overlapped, and their mixture created new systems of meaning and of exchange. Finally, the book tells of the breakdown of accommodation and common meanings and the re-creation of the Indians as alien and exotic. First published in 1991, the 20th anniversary edition includes a new preface by the author examining the impact and legacy of this study.

May 3: David Crockett: The Lion of the West by Michael Wallis . Born into a humble Tennessee family in 1786, Crockett never &#8220killed him a b’ar&#8221 when he was only three. But he did cut a huge swath across early-nineteenth-century America—as a bear hunter, a frontier explorer, a soldier serving under Andrew Jackson, an unlikely congressman, and, finally, a martyr in his now-controversial death at the Alamo.

June 7: New York Burning: Liberty, Slavery, and Conspiracy in Eighteenth-Century Manhattan by Jill Lepore. The little-known story of a supposed slave uprising in Manhattan in 1741, for which dozens of black men were hanged or burned at the stake. In this first-rate social history, Lepore not only adroitly examines the case’s travesty, questioning whether such a conspiracy ever existed, but also draws a splendid portrait of the struggles, prejudices and triumphs of a very young New York City in which fully one in five inhabitants was enslaved.

Books: Aaron Burr’s Challenge to Jefferson’s America

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The name Aaron Burr instantly calls to mind one event: his duel with Alexander Hamilton, in which the latter, one of the darlings of American politics, was slain. But there was so much more to Burr, one of the most fascinating characters in American history, now revealed in American Emperor: Aaron Burr’s Challenge to Jefferson’s America (Simon & Schuster, 2011) by DC-based historian David O. Stewart.

At one time or another, Burr was considered a man of great integrity, a shoo-in for the presidency, a murderer, and a traitor. Yet the most outrageous story about Burr is known to few and understood by fewer still. As he neared the end of his vice-presidential term in 1804, he began an extraordinary scheme to create his own personal empire in North America.

For generations, historians and writers have scratched their heads over what Aaron Burr was up to when he traveled west in 1805, leaving the vice presidency while under indictment in two states for the murder of Hamilton. Did Burr mean to foment secession of America’s West? Insurrection in New Orleans? An invasion of Mexico and Spanish Florida? Or simply to lead a settlement of Louisiana lands? In American Emperor, Stewart tells this astonishing part of Burr’s story, tracing his descent from made man to political pariah to imperialist adventurer.

The same passion for history that led the New York Times to print a glowing review of Stewart’s first book, The Summer of 1787, about the writing of the Constitution, can be found in his new account that combines history with an arresting adventure story.

Note: Books noticed on this site have been provided by the publishers. Purchases made through this Amazon link help support this site.

Books: The Unkechaug of Eastern Long Island

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Few people may realize that Long Island is still home to American Indians, the region’s original inhabitants. One of the oldest reservations in the United States—the Poospatuck Reservation—is located in Suffolk County, the densely populated eastern extreme of the greater New York area. The Unkechaug Indians, known also by the name of their reservation, are recognized by the State of New York but not by the federal government. A new narrative account by John A. Strong, a noted authority on the Algonquin peoples of Long Island, has been published as The Unkechaug Indians of Eastern Long Island: A History (Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 2011). The book is the first comprehensive history of the Unkechaug Indians.

Drawing on archaeological and documentary sources, Strong traces the story of the Unkechaugs from their ancestral past, predating the arrival of Europeans, to the present day.

Although granted a large reservation in perpetuity, the Unkechaugs were, like many Indian tribes, the victims of broken promises, and their landholdings diminished from several thousand acres to fifty-five. Despite their losses, the Unkechaugs have persisted in maintaining their cultural traditions and autonomy by taking measures to boost their economy, preserve their language, strengthen their communal bonds, and defend themselves against legal challenges.

In early histories of Long Island, the Unkechaugs figured only as a colorful backdrop to celebratory stories of British settlement. Strong’s account, which includes extensive testimony from tribal members themselves, brings the Unkechaugs out of the shadows of history and establishes a permanent record of their struggle to survive as a distinct community.

Note: Books noticed on this site have been provided by the publishers. Purchases made through this Amazon link help support this site.

AIHA Presents Dennis Gaffney Civil War Lecture

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The Albany Institute of History & Art will host local freelance author Dennis Gaffney on Sunday, January 8 at 2 PM, as he shares a series of stories from the Civil War. The lecture is free with museum admission.

Gaffney’s book, The Civil War: Exploring History One Week at a Time, has been widely praised as a reader-friendly way to learn about the Civil War. Amateur historian and Civil War buffs will both learn something new at Gaffney’s talk, which will include details about the role of Albany and New York State in the war effort. Also covered will be topics involving the medical history of the Civil War, which complement the current exhibition Albany and the Civil War: Medicine on the Home and Battle Fronts.

Following the lecture Gaffney will be available to answer questions and to sign copies of his book, which will be available for sale at the Museum Shop. The book signing session is free and open to the public. The Albany and the Civil War exhibition will be on display in the Albany Institute Entry Gallery through February 26, 2012.