Alumni Books

Continental Defense in the Eisenhower Era: Nuclear Antiaircraft Arms and the Cold War

June 05, 2019

U.S. policy makers believed that the American weapons could safely compensate for technological limitations which otherwise made it difficult to destroy high flying, fast moving airplanes. In Continental Defense in the Eisenhower Era, Christopher Bright, PhD ’06, traces this armament from conception through deployment. The book also discusses the widespread acceptance of these weapons by the American public, a result of being touted in news releases, featured in films and television episodes, and disseminated throughout society as a whole.

The Uprooted: Race, Children, and Imperialism in French Indochina, 1890-1980

May 19, 2016

For over a century French officials in Indochina systematically uprooted métis children—those born of Southeast Asian mothers and white, African, or Indian fathers—from their homes. The Uprooted offers an in-depth investigation of the colony's child-removal program: the motivations behind it, reception of it, and resistance to it.

Empowering Revolution: America, Poland and the End of the Cold War

October 01, 2014

In this groundbreaking history, Gregory F. Domber, PhD ’08, shows how both the United States and the Soviet Union vied for influence over Poland’s politically tumultuous steps toward democratic revolution in the 1980s. As the most populous country in Eastern Europe as well as the birthplace of the largest anti-communist dissident movement, Poland is crucial in understanding the end of the Cold War. The book examines American policy toward Poland and its promotion of moderate voices within the opposition, while simultaneously addressing the Soviet and European influences on Poland's revolution in 1989.

For Fear of an Elective King: George Washington and the Presidential Title Controversy of 1789

September 08, 2014

Kathleen Bartoloni-Tuazon, PhD ’10, gives a rich account of the title controversy and its meanings. In the spring of 1789, within weeks of the establishment of the new federal government based on the U.S. Constitution, the Senate and House of Representatives fell into dispute regarding how to address the president. Congress, the press and individuals debated more than 30 titles, many of which had royal associations and some of which were clearly monarchical.

Book cover of "The 'People's Joan of Arc'" by Brooke Speer Orr

The "People's Joan of Arc": Mary Elizabeth Lease, Gendered Politics and Populist Party Politics in Gilded-Age America

January 01, 2014

Brooke Speer Orr, PhD ’02, traces the captivating life of renowned activist Mary Elizabeth Lease in this comprehensive biography. While Lease is most remembered in American history textbooks as the radical leader of the Populist Party who directed desperate farmers “to raise less corn and more hell,” her influence and involvement in the late 19th-century women’s suffrage movement and early 20th-century feminist movement place her on par with luminaries such as Susan B. Anthony.

Book cover of "The Limits of Detente" by Craig Daigle

The Limits of Détente: the United States, the Soviet Union, and the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1969-1973

October 30, 2012

In the first book-length analysis of the origins of the October 1973 Arab-Israeli War, Craig Daigle, PhD ’08, draws on documents only recently made available to show how the war resulted not only from tension and competing interest between Arabs and Israelis, but also from policies adopted in both Washington and Moscow. Between 1969 and 1973, the Middle East in general and the Arab-Israeli conflict in particular emerged as a crucial Cold War battleground where the limits of détente appeared in sharp relief.

Book cover of "Betting on the Africans" by Philip E. Muehlenbeck

Betting on the Africans: John F. Kennedy's Courting of African Nationalist Leaders

February 06, 2012

Philip Muehlenbeck, PhD ’07, closely examines former President John F. Kennedy’s policies toward Guinea, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Egypt, Algeria, Tanganyika and South Africa. Kennedy’s policies largely won the sympathies of people in those countries, while at the same time alienating more traditional American allies. Drawing on archival sources from the United States, United Kingdom and Africa, Betting on the Africans adds an important chapter to the historiography of Kennedy’s Cold War strategy as well as the history of decolonization.

Emily Greene Balch: The Long Road to Internationalism

December 01, 2010

Kristen Gwinn, PhD ’08, delivers this first scholarly biography of Emily Greene Balch, a well-known American academic and cofounder of Boston's first settlement house. Balch was an important Progressive Era reformer and advocate for world peace who served as a professor of economics and sociology at Wellesley College for 20 years, until her opposition to World War I resulted in the board of trustees refusing to renew her contract. Undeterred, Balch continued to emphasize the important role of international institutions in preventing and reconciling conflicts.

Book cover of "The Rise and Fall of Theological Enlightenment" by Jeffrey D. Burson

The Rise and Fall of Theological Enlightenment: Jean-Martin de Prades and Ideological Polarization in Eighteenth-Century France

April 30, 2010

Jeffrey D. Burson, PhD ’06, analyzes the history of the French Enlightenment and its relationship to the French Revolution by casting it as a diverse constellation of Theological Enlightenment discourses originating between about 1730 and 1762 from high-stakes cultural and political controversies involving the royal court, the government and the Catholic Church. Burson places the Abbé Jean-Martin de Prades at the center of the storm.

Mosquito Soldiers: Malaria, Yellow Fever, and the Course of the American Civil War

April 01, 2010

In this groundbreaking medical history, Andrew McIlwaine Bell, PhD ’07, explores the impact of two terrifying mosquito-borne maladies on the major political and military events of the 1860s, revealing how deadly microorganisms carried by a tiny insect helped shape the course of the Civil War. Soldiers on both sides frequently complained about the annoying pests that invaded their tents and generally contributed to the misery of army life. Little did they suspect that the South’s large mosquito population operated as a sort of mercenary force, a third army, one that could work for or against either side depending on the circumstances.

The Federal Art Project and the Creation of Middlebrow Culture

April 01, 2009

Victoria Grieve, PhD ’04, provides an intellectual history chronicling the processes of compromise and negotiation between high and low art, federal and local interests and the Progressive Era and New Deal. Grieve examines how intellectual trends in the early 20th century joined forces with government forces and structures of the New Deal's Federal Art Project to redefine American taste in the visual arts.

The Gods of Diyala: Transfer of Command in Iraq

August 08, 2008

In March 2004, Gregory M. Tomlin, PhD ’13, and Caleb S. Cage deployed to Baquba, Iraq, on a mission that would redefine how conventional U.S. military forces fight an urban war. Drawing on their experience with leading artillery units through a transition into anti-insurgent rifle companies and carrying out daily combat patrols in one of the region’s most notorious hotspots, Cage and Tomlin chronicle Task Force 1-6 Field Artillery’s year on the ground in Iraq and its response to the insurgency that threatened to engulf their corner of the Sunni Triangle.

Education and the Cold War: The Battle for the American School

February 15, 2008

Andrew Hartman, PhD ’06, offers a fresh perspective on the post-Cold War transformation in U.S. political culture by way of an examination of the educational history of that era. Shortly after the Russians launched Sputnik in 1957, Hannah Arendt quipped that "only in America could a crisis in education actually become a factor in politics." The Cold War battle for the American school — dramatized but not initiated by Sputnik — proved Arendt correct. The schools served as a battleground in the ideological conflicts of the 1950s.

Algernon Sidney Crapsey: The Last of the Heretics

December 01, 2007

Stephen Neese, PhD ‘02, reflects on a man whose life reflected the religious, social and cultural conventions of late 19th- and early 20th-century America. The changes that Crapsey experienced in his personal life paralleled the intellectual developments that attended the nation as it moved from a Protestant Christian culture to a primarily secular one.

Pat Robertson: An American Life

April 26, 2007

David John Marley, PhD ’04, delivers the first professional, independent biography in 20 years of Pat Robertson, founder of the Christian Coalition and the Christian Broadcasting Network, host of the daily TV show The 700 Club and former presidential candidate. Robertson's Christian Coalition led the Republican takeover of Congress in 1994 and his leadership of the Christian Right helped elect George W. Bush.

Powerful and Brutal Weapons: Nixon, Kissinger, and the Easter Offensive

March 30, 2007

Stephen Randolph, PhD ’05, returns to a conflict that severely tested America’s civilian and military leaders. In 1972, the United States sought to withdraw from Vietnam with its credibility intact. As diplomatic negotiations were pursued in Paris, former President Richard Nixon and National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger hoped that gains on the battlefield would strengthen their position at the negotiating table — working against the relentless deadline of a presidential election year.