Autumn 2009 Catalogue 4 pdfing:1 - Yale University Press

An anatomy of the infamousprosecution of a Jewish officer thathas profound implications for ourown timeOctober272 pp. 197x134mm. 1 b/w illus.ISBN 978-0-300-12532-0 £18.00*Why the Dreyfus Affair MattersHistoryLouis BegleyIn December 1894, Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a brilliant French artilleryofficer and a Jew of Alsatian descent, was court martialled for sellingsecrets to the German military attaché in Paris based on perjuredtestimony and trumped up evidence. The sentence was militarydegradation and life imprisonment on Devil’s Island, a hell hole off thecoast of French Guiana. Five years later, the case was overturned andeventually Dreyfus was completely exonerated. Meanwhile, the DreyfusAffair tore France apart, pitting Dreyfusards—committed to restoringfreedom and honour to an innocent man convicted of a crimecommitted by another—against nationalists, anti-Semites andmilitarists who preferred having an innocent man rot to exposing thecrimes committed by ministers of war and the army’s top brass in orderto secure Dreyfus’s conviction.Was the Dreyfus Affair merely another instance of the rise in France ofa virulent form of anti-Semitism? In Why the Dreyfus Affair Matters, theacclaimed novelist draws upon his legal expertise to create a rivetingaccount of the famously complex case, and to remind us of the interesteach one of us has in the faithful execution of laws as the safeguard ofour liberties and honour.Louis Begley is a bestselling novelist and a lawyer who retired after a45-year career as partner in one of America’s great law firms. His fictionincludes Wartime Lies, About Schmidt and Matters of Honor.Why X MattersTranslation rights: Georges Borchardt Inc, New York31The tragic untold story of how anation struggling for its freedomdenied it to one of its ownJanuary240 pp. 234x156mm. 22 b/w illus.ISBN 978-0-300-15214-2 £20.00*The Hanging of Thomas JeremiahA Free Black Man’s Encounter with LibertyJ. William HarrisIn 1775, Thomas Jeremiah was one of fewer than 500 ‘Free Negros’ inSouth Carolina and, with an estimated worth of £1000, possibly therichest person of African descent in British North America. A slaveowner himself, Jeremiah was falsely accused by whites—who resentedhis success as a Charleston harbor pilot—of sowing insurrection amongslaves at the behest of the British.Chief among the accusers was Henry Laurens, Charleston’s leadingpatriot, a slave owner and former slave trader, who would later becomethe president of the Continental Congress. Lord William Campbell,royal governor of the colony, who passionately believed the accusationwas unjust, tried to save Jeremiah’s life but failed. Though a free man,Jeremiah was tried in a slave court and sentenced to death. In August,1775, he was hanged and his body burned.J. William Harris tells Jeremiah’s story in full for the first time,illuminating the contradiction between a nation that would be born ina struggle for freedom and yet deny it—often violently—to others.J. William Harris is Professor of History at the University of NewHampshire. He is the author of The Making of the American South:A Short History, 1500–1877, Deep Souths: Delta, Piedmont and Sea IslandSociety in the Age of Segregation (finalist for the 2002 Pulitzer Prize inhistory) and Plain Folk and Gentry in a Slave Society: White Liberty andBlack Slavery in Augusta’s Hinterlands.Translation rights: Elaine Markson Literary Agency, New York