Autumn 2009 Catalogue 4 pdfing:1 - Yale University Press

70 U.S. StudiesIn the Name ofGod and CountryReconsidering Terrorismin American HistoryMichael FellmanWith insight and originality,Michael Fellman argues thatterrorism, in various forms, hasbeen a constant and drivingforce in American history. Inpart, this is due to the nature ofAmerican republicanism andProtestant Christianity, which he believes contain a core ofmoral absolutism and self-righteousness that perpetrators ofterrorism use to justify their actions. Fellman also argues thatthere is an intrinsic relationship between terrorist acts bynon-state groups and responses on the part of the state; unlikemany observers, he believes that both the action and thereaction constitute terrorism.Michael Fellman is Professor of History Emeritus at SimonFraser University in Vancouver, British Columbia. Amongother books, he is author of Inside War: The GuerrillaConflict in Missouri During the American Civil War, CitizenSherman: A Life of William T. Sherman and The Making ofRobert E. Lee, and co-author of This Terrible War: The CivilWar and Its Aftermath.February 320 pp. 234x156mm. 9 b/w illus.ISBN 978-0-300-11510-9 £20.00*The Prison and theAmerican ImaginationCaleb SmithHow did a nation so famously associated with freedom becomeinternationally identified with imprisonment? After thescandals of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, and in themidst of a dramatically escalating prison population, thequestion is particularly urgent. In this timely, provocative study,Caleb Smith argues that the dehumanisation inherent incaptivity has always been at the heart of American civil society.Exploring legal, political and literary texts—including theworks of Dickinson, Melville and Emerson—Smith showshow alienation and self-reliance, social death and spiritualrebirth, torture and penitence came together in the prison, ascene for the portrayal of both gothic nightmares andromantic dreams. Demonstrating how the ‘cellular soul’ hasendured since the antebellum age, The Prison and the AmericanImagination offers a passionate and haunting critique of thevery idea of solitude in American life.“Smith’s book is remarkably inventive and wide-ranging withits close interweaving of literature and history, its refusal torely slavishly on Foucault, its close reading, and itsrefreshingly lucid style.”—Terry EagletonCaleb Smith is Assistant Professor of English at Yale University.Yale Studies in EnglishOctober 272 pp. 234x156mm. 4 b/w illus.ISBN 978-0-300-14166-5 £28.50*The Bourgeois FrontierFrench Towns, French Traders,and American ExpansionJay GitlinThe Seven Years War brought an end tothe French colonial enterprise in NorthAmerica, but the French in towns suchas New Orleans, St. Louis and Detroitsurvived the transition to Americanrule. French traders from Mid-Americasuch as the Chouteaus and Robidouxsof St. Louis then became agents ofchange in the West, perfecting a strategyof ‘middle grounding’ by pursuingalliances within Indian and Mexicancommunities in advance of Americansettlement and re-investing fur tradeprofits in land, town sites, banks andtransportation. The Bourgeois Frontierprovides the missing French connectionbetween the urban Midwest andwestern expansion.Jay Gitlin is Lecturer, Department ofHistory, Yale University, and AssociateDirector of the Howard R. LamarCenter for the Study of Frontiers andBorders.The Lamar Series in Western HistoryJanuary 320 pp. 234x156mm.29 b/w illus.ISBN 978-0-300-10118-8 £30.00One NationUnder ContractThe Outsourcing of AmericanPower and the Future ofForeign PolicyAllison StangerInternational relations scholar AllisonStanger shows how contractors becamean integral part of American foreignpolicy, often in scandalous ways—butalso maintains that contractors aren’tthe problem; the absence of goodgovernment is. Outsourcing done rightis, in fact, indispensable to America’sinterests in the information age.“The book aims admirably for bothbreadth and depth, examining thespecifics of private activity in defense,diplomacy, development and securityunder an intellectual rubric that cutsacross all four spheres. This is afascinating treatment of an importantsubject.”—Debora Spar, President,Barnard CollegeAllison Stanger is Russell LengProfessor of International Politics andEconomics at Middlebury College andDirector of its Rohatyn Center forInternational Affairs.Nov 288 pp. 234x156mm. 7 b/w illus.ISBN 978-0-300-15265-4 £20.00The Brittle Thread of LifeBackcountry People Makea Place for Themselvesin Early AmericaMark WilliamsThe colonists who settled thebackcountry in eighteenth-century NewEngland were recruited from the socialfringe, people who were desperate forland, autonomy and respectability, willingto make a living in a hard environment.Mark Williams’ microhistorical approachgives voice to the settlers, proprietors andofficials of the small colonial settlementsthat became Granby, Connecticut andAshfield, Massachusetts. These people—often disrespectful, disorderly anddefiant—were drawn to the ideology ofthe Revolution in the 1760s and 1770sthat stressed equality, independence andproperty rights. The backcountry settlerspushed the emerging nation’s politicalculture in a more radical direction thanmany of their leaders or the FoundingFathers preferred and helped put ademocratic imprint on the new nation.Mark Williams teaches history at theLoomis Chaffee School in Connecticut.September 288 pp. 234x156mm.15 b/w illus.ISBN 978-0-300-13922-8 £35.00