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Latin America in the Civil War Era: A working bibliography and research memo

This evolving list is the first of many steps of an intellectual process to comprehend the scope of relevant literature in this field. It is a very broad initial attempt to identify important books, essays, articles, memoirs, archival collections and other primary and secondary sources.

 

The U.S. Civil War sent economic, political and social shockwaves around the world.

One of my objectives is to understand how those shockwaves were felt throughout Latin America, specifically throughout the republican and imperial governments, the intelligentsia, the diplomatic circles, the street-level multiracial societies, and the military commands. I am especially interested and focused on Mexico’s civil war between supporters of the republican government of Benito Juarez and the supporters of Maximilian, the French puppet emperor. The civil strife began when France invaded in the early 1860s. I am particularly interested in exploring how these two civil wars churned like two hurricanes, feeding off each other, destroying everything within reach, and setting the stage for new eras of democratic government.

I will also explore how both wars resonated in the Texas-Mexico borderlands communities and how people in that region thrived economically, endured privation and tragedy, and reimagined their relationship to their respective republican states. I also hope to better understand through literature and letters how men and women throughout Latin America – and particularly in Mexico — intellectually and politically perceived their own futures as they watched the U.S. republic break apart over slavery and the French invaders attempt to build a European monarchy from the ruins of Mexican democracy.

This evolving list of sources is the first of many steps of an intellectual process to comprehend the scope of relevant literature in this field. It is a very broad attempt to identify important books, essays, articles, memoirs, archival collections and other primary and secondary sources. Studies of communities throughout the Western Hemisphere and Europe are included to inform the larger transnational and transatlantic context I will prepare.

The second step will be an annotated bibliography. That will then lead to a comprehensive review essay analyzing the evolution of the literature, the conversations, and the debates. The essay will also identify potential avenues of future research and the challenges of traveling down those avenues.

I certainly welcome corrections, comments and suggestions as this process continues. You may reach me at this address: remembrance_@hotmail.com.

MEXICO

Aldis, Owen F. “Louis Napoleon and the Southern Confederacy,” North American Review 129 (October 1879): 342-362.

Auer, Jeffrey J. “Lincoln’s Minister to Mexico,” Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly 57 (1950).

Bacha-Garza, Roseann, Christopher L. Miller and Russell K. Skowronek. The Civil War on the Rio Grande, 1846-1876. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2019.

Baguley, David. Napoleon III and His Regime: An Extravaganza. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2000.

Barker, Nancy N. “France, Austria, and the Mexican Venture, 1861-1864,” French Historical Studies (Autumn 1963): 224-245.

—. “Monarchy in Mexico: Harebrained Scheme or Well-Considered Prospect?” The Journal of Modern History 48, no. 1 (March 1976): 51-68.

—. “The Factor of ‘Race’ in the French Experience in Mexico, 1821-1861,” The Hispanic American Historical Review 59, no. 1 (February 1979): 64-80.

Bernstein, Harry. Matias Romero, 1837-1898. Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Economica, 1973.

Beverton, Alys. “Transborder Capitalism and National Reconciliation: The American Press Reimagines U.S.-Mexico Relations after the Civil War,” The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era (2022): 40-61.

Bissell, Jonathan. “The Conflicting National Narratives of the 1846-1848 North American Invasion of Mexico,” Historical Geography 45 (2017): 220-251.

Bock, Carl H. Prelude to Tragedy: The Negotiation and Breakdown of the Tripartite Convention of London, October 31, 1861. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1966.

Brettle, Adrian Robert. “The Fortunes of War: Confederate Expansionist Ambitions During the American Civil War.” PhD diss. University of Virginia, 2014.

Callahan, James Morton. Evolution of Seward’s Mexican Policy. West Virginia University Studies in American History ser. 1, Diplomatic History, nos. 4, 5, and 6. Morgantown, W.Va.: West Virginia University, 1909.

Dabbs, Jack Autrey. The French Army in Mexico, 1861-1867: A Study in Military Government. The Hague: Mouton, 1963.

Downs, Gregory P. “The Mexicanization of American Politics: The United States’ Transnational Path from Civil War to Stabilization.” American Historical Review 117 (April 2012): 408.

Delaney, Robert W. “Matamoros, Port for Texas during the Civil War,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 4 (April 1955): 473-487.

Flint, Henry M. Mexico Under Maximilian. HardPress Publishing, 2013.

Frazier, Robert W. “Matias Romero and the French Intervention in Mexico.” PhD diss. University of California, Los Angeles, 1941.

—. “Latin American Projects to Aid Mexico during the French Intervention,” The Hispanic American Historical Review 28 (August 1948): 377-388.

Goldwert, Marvin. “Matias Romero and Congressional Opposition to Seward’s Policy toward the French Intervention in Mexico,” The Americas 22, no. 1 (July 1965): 22-40.

Gonzalez-Quiroga, Miguel Angel. “Conflict and Cooperation in the Making of Texas-Mexico Border Society, 1840-1880” in Bridging National Borders in North America: Transnational and Comparative Histories, 33-58, edited by Benjamin H. Johnson and Andrew R. Graybill. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2010.

Greenberg, Amy S. A Wicked War: Polk, Clay, Lincoln, and the 1846 U.S. Invasion of Mexico. New York: Knopf, 2012.

Hanna, A.J. “The Role of Matthew Fontaine Maury in the Mexican Empire,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 55 (April 1947): 105-125.

Hanna, Kathryn Abbey. “The Roles of the South in the French Intervention in Mexico,” The Journal of Southern History 20, no. 1 (February 1954): 3-21.

—. Napoleon III and Mexico: American Triumph over Monarchy. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1971.

—. “Incidents of the Confederate Blockade,” The Journal of Southern History 11: 222.

Hardy, William E. “South of the Border: Ulysses S. Grant and the French Intervention.” Civil War History 54, no. 1 (March 2008): 63-86.

Hart, John Mason. Empire and Revolution: The Americans in Mexico since the Civil War. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002.

Henderson, Timothy J. A Glorious Defeat: Mexico and Its War with the United States. New York: Hill and Wang, 2008.

Horgan, James J. “A Confederate Bull in a Mexican China Shop” in Divided We Fall: Essays on Confederate Nation Building, edited by John M. Belohlavek. Saint Leo, Fla: Saint Leo College Press, 1991.

Hudson, Linda S. Mistress of Manifest Destiny: A Biography of Jane McManus Storm Cazneau, 1807-1878. Austin: Texas State Historical Society, 2001.

Ibsen, Kristine. Maximilian, Mexico, and the Invention of Empire. Nashville, Tennessee: Vanderbilt University Press, 2010.

Irby, James. Backdoor at Bagdad: The Civil War on the Rio Grande. El Paso: Texas Western Press, 1977.

Jonas, Raymond. Habsburgs on the Rio Grande: The Rise and Fall of the Second Mexican Empire. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2024.

Kiser, William S. “We Must Have Chihuahua and Sonora: Civil War Diplomacy in the U.S. Mexico Borderlands,” The Journal of Civil War History 9, no. 2 (June 2019): 196-222.

McAllen, M.M. Maximilian and Carlotta, Europe’s Last Empire in Mexico. San Antonio: Trinity University Press, 2014.

McCormack, Richard. “James Watson Webb and the French Withdrawal from Mexico,” The Hispanic American Historical Review 31 (May 1951): 274-286.

Mahoney, Harry Thayer., and Marjorie Locke Mahoney. Mexico and the Confederacy: 1860-1867. San Francisco, California: Austin & Winfield, 1998.

Malloy, George Wallace. “The United States and the French Intervention in Mexico, 1861-1867.” PhD diss. University of California, Berkeley, 1937

Martin, Percy F. Maximilian in Mexico: The Story of the French Intervention (1861-1867). New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1914.

“The Mexico Question,” Harper’s Weekly, September 12, 1863, 578.

Mijangos y Gonzalez, Pablo. “Guerra Civil y Estado-Nacion en Norteamerica (1848-1867),” in El poder y la sangre: Guerra, Estado y nacion en la decada de 1860, edited by Guillermo Palacios and Erika Pani. Mexico City: El Colegio de Mexico, 2014: 43-62.

Miller, Robert Ryal. “Californians against the Emperor,” California Historical Society Quarterly 37 (1958): 192-214.

—. “The American Legion of Honor in Mexico,” Pacific Historical Review 30 (1961): 229-241.

—. “Gaspar Sanchez Ochoa: A Mexican Secret Agent in the United States,” The Historian 23 (1961): 316-329.

—. “Placido Vega: A Mexican Secret Agent in the United States,” The Americas 19 (1962): 137-148.

—. “Lew Wallace and the French Intervention in Mexico,” Indiana Magazine of History 59 (1963): 31-50.

—. “Matias Romero: Mexican Minister to the United States during the Juarez-Maximilian Era,” The Hispanic American Historical Review, 45 (May 1965): 228-245.

—. “Arms across the Border: United States Aid to Juarez during the French Intervention in Mexico,” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, n.s, 63, no. 6 (1973): 1-68.

Monaghan, Jay. Abraham Lincoln Deals with Foreign Affairs: A Diplomat in Carpet Slippers. Lincoln, Neb.: Bison Books, 1997.

Mora-Torres, Juan. The Making of the Mexican Border: The State, Capitalism, and Society and Nuevo Leon, 1848-1910. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2001.

Pani, Erika. “Dreaming of a Mexican Empire: The Political Projects of the Imperialistas,” The Hispanic American Historical Review 82, no. 1 (2002): 1-31.

—. “Law, Allegiance, and Sovereignty in Civil War Mexico, 1857-1867,” The Journal of the Civil War Era 7, no. 4 (December 2017): 570-596.

—. Torn Asunder: Republican Crises and Civil Wars in the United States and Mexico, 1848–1867. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2025.

Resendez, Andres. “North American Peonage,” The Journal of the Civil War Era 7, no. 4 (December 2017): 597 619.

Ridley, Jasper. Maximilian and Juarez. London: Constable, 2001.

Rippy, J. Fred. The United States and Mexico. New York, 1926.

—. “Mexican Projects of the Confederates,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 22: 219-317.

Rister, Carl Coke. “Carlota: A Confederate Colony in Mexico,” The Journal of Southern History 11 (February 1945): 33-50.

Roeder, Ralph. Juarez and His Mexico: A Biographical History. New York: Viking, 1947.

Rolle, Andrew F. The Lost Cause: The Confederate Exodus to Mexico. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1965.

Romero, Matias. A Mexican View of America in the 1860s: A Foreign Diplomat Describes the Civil War and Reconstruction, ed. and trans. Thomas D. Schoonover. London: Associated University Presses, 1991.

Salm-Salm, Felix C. My Diary in Mexico in 1867 Including the Last Days of the Emperor Maximilian. London, 1868.

Schoonover, Thomas. “Mexican Affairs and the Impeachment of President Johnson,” East Tennessee Historical Society’s Publications 46 (1974): 76-93.

—. Dollars Over Dominion: The Triumph of Liberalism in Mexican-United States Relations, 1861-1867. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1978.

—., ed., Mexican Lobby: Matias Romero in Washington 1861-1867. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1986.

—., “Napoleon Is Coming! Maximilian Is Coming? The International History of the Civil War in the Caribbean Basi,” in The Union, The Confederacy, and the Atlantic Rim, edited by Robert E. May. West Lafayette, Ind.: Purdue University Press, 1995. 101-130.

Smith, Gene. Maximilian and Carlota: A Tale of Romance and Tragedy. Morrow, 1973.

St. John, Rachel. “The Unpredictable America of William Gwin: Expansion, Secession, and the Unstable Borders of Nineteenth Century North America,” The Journal of the Civil War Era 6 no. 1 (March 2016): 56-84.

Thompson, Jerry Don. Mexican Texans in the Union Army. El Paso: Texas Western Press, 1986.

—. “Mutiny and Desertion on the Rio Grande: The Strange Saga of Captain Adrian J. Vidal,” Military History XII, no. 3.

—. “A Stand Along the Border: Santos Benavides and the Battle of Laredo,” Civil War Illustrated (August 1980).

—, ed. Juan Cortina and the Texas-Mexico Frontier: 1859-1877. El Paso: University of Texas at El Paso Press, 1994.

—. Cortina: Defending the Mexican Name in Texas. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2007.

Truett, Samuel. Fugitive Landscapes: The Forgotten History of the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.

Tyler, Ronnie C. Santiago Vidaurri and the Southern Confederacy. Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1973.

Tyrner-Tyrnauer, A.R. Lincoln and the Emperors. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1962.

Wahlstrom, Todd W. The Southern Exodus to Mexico: Migration across the Borderlands after the American Civil War. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2015.

Waite, Kevin. “Jefferson Davis and Proslavery Visions of Empire in the Far West,” The Journal of the Civil War Era 4 (December 2016): 554-557.

Wasserman, Mark. Everyday Life and Politics in Nineteenth Century Mexico: Men, Women, and War. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2000.

Wilson, William Moss. “Lincoln’s Mexican Visitor.” Disunion: The New York Times. January 17, 2011. Accessed on January 25, 2023. https://archive.nytimes.com/opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/17/lincolns-mexican-visitor.

CANADA

Bachand, Marise. “Disunited Daughters of the Confederates: Creoles and Canadians at the Intersection of Nations, States, and Empires.” The Journal of the Civil War Era 7, no. 4 (December 2017): 541-569.

Buckner, Phillip. “‘British North America and a Continent in Dissolution:’ ” The American Civil War in the Making of the Canadian Confederation,” The Journal of the Civil War Era 7, no. 4 (December 2017): 512-540.

Dashew, Doris W. “The Story of an Illusion: The Plan to Trade the Alabama Claims for Canada,” Civil War History 15 (December 1969): 332-348.

Jenkins, Danny R. “British North Americans Who Fought in the American Civil War: 1861-1865.” MA thesis, University of Ottawa, 1993.

Morton, W.L. “British North America and a Continent in Dissolution, 1861-71.” History 47 (January 1962): 139-156.

Reid, Richard M. African Canadians in Union Blue: Volunteering for the Cause in the Civil War. Vancouver: University of British Colombia Press, 2014.

Winks, Robin. Canada and the United States: The Civil War Years. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1960.

CHILE

Burr, Robert N. By Reason or Force: Chile and the Balancing of Power in South America, 1830-1905. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967.

PERU

Blanchard, Peter. Slavery and Abolition in Early Republican Peru. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources Books, 1992.

Eichhorn, Niels. “The Many South Carolinas in the Americas,” Muster: The Journal of the Civil War Era. May 2, 2023. Accessed on May 23, 2023. https://www.journalofthecivilwarera.org/2023/05/the-many-south-carolinas-in-the-americas.

“Emancipation Declared in Peru,” Anti-Slavery Reporter, July 2, 1855, 157.

Love, Thomas F. The Independent Republic of Arequipa: Making Regional Culture in the Andes. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2017.

GENERAL SOUTH AMERICA

Ferris, Nathan L. “The Relations of the United States with South America during the Civil War,” The Hispanic American Historical Review 21 (February 1941): 51-78.

Fitz, Caitlin A. “The Hemispheric Dimensions of Early U.S. Nationalism: The War of 1812, Its Aftermath, and Spanish American Independence,” The Journal of American History 102 (September 2015): 356–379.

—. Our Sister Republics: The United States in an Age of Revolutions. New York: Norton, 2016.

Gobat, Michel. “The Invention of Latin America: The Transnational History of Anti-Imperialism, Democracy, and Race,” American Historical Review 118 (December 2013): 1345-1375.

Joseph, Gilbert M., Catherine C. Legrand, and Ricardo D. Salvatore, eds. Close Encounters of Empire: Writing the Cultural History of U.S.-Latin American Relations. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1998.

Kelly, Patrick J. “The Cat’s-Paw: Confederate Ambitions in Latin America” in American Civil Wars: The United States, Latin America, Europe and the Crisis of the 1860s. Edited by Don H. Doyle. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017.

—. “The Lost Continent of Abraham Lincoln,” The Journal of the Civil War Era 9, no. 2 (June 2019): 223-248.

May, Robert E. Manifest Destiny’s Underworld: Filibustering in Antebellum America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002.

—. Slavery, Race and Conquest in the Tropics: Lincoln, Douglass and the Future of Latin America. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013.

—. “The Irony of Confederate Diplomacy; Visions of Empire, the Monroe Doctrine, and the Quest for Nationhood,” The Journal of Southern History 81 (February 2017): 69-106.

Rothera, Evan C. Civil Wars and Reconstructions in the Americas: The United States Mexico and Argentina, 1860-1880. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2022.

Sanders, James E. The Vanguard of the Atlantic World: Creating Modernity, Nation, and Democracy in Nineteenth Century Latin America. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2014.

Scott, Rebecca, et. al. The Abolition of Slavery and the Aftermath of Emancipation in Brazil. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1988.

Tenorio-Trillo, Mauricio. Latin America: The Allure and Power of an Idea. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017.

CUBA

Chaffin, Tom. Fatal Glory: Narciso López and the First Clandestine U.S. War Against Cuba. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1996.

Corwin, Arthur. Spain and the Abolition of Slavery in Cuba, 1817-1886. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1967.

Levander, Caroline. “Confederate Cuba,” American Literature 78 (December 2006): 821-845

Scott, Rebecca. Slave Emancipation in Cuba: The Transition to Free Labor, 1860-1899. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985.

—. Degrees of Freedom: Louisiana and Cuba After Slavery. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005.

GENERAL SPANISH CARIBBEAN

González-Quintero, Nicolás. “Empire, Slavery, and Exile in the 19th Century Spanish Caribbean.” PhD diss. University of Texas at Austin, 2020.

May, Robert E. The Southern Dream of a Caribbean Empire, 1854-1861. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1973.

Rugemer, Edward Bartlett. The Problem of Emancipation: The Caribbean Roots of the American Civil War. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2008.

Schmidt-Nowara, Christopher. Empire and Antislavery: Spain, Cuba, and Puerto Rico, 1833-1870. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1999.

—. “From Aggression to Crisis: The Spanish Empire in the 1860s” in American Civil Wars: The United States, Latin America, Europe and the Crisis of the 1860s. Edited by Don H. Doyle. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017.

HAITI

Clavin, Matthew. “A Second Haitian Revolution: John Brown, Toussaint Louverture and the Making of the American Civil War,” Civil War History 54 no. 2 (June 2008): 117-145.

HONDURAS

Coryell, Janet L. “’The Lincoln Colony:’ Aaron Columbus Burr’s Proposed Colonization of British Honduras,” Civil War History 43, no. 1 (March 1997): 5-16.

NICARAGUA

Gobat, Michel. Confronting the American Dream: Nicaragua under U.S. Imperial Rule. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2005.

BRITISH EMPIRE

Barnes, James J., and Patience P. Barnes. The American Civil War Through British Eyes: Dispatches from British Diplomats. Kent, OH: Kent University Press, 2005.

Blackett, R.J.M. Divided Hearts: Britain and the American Civil War. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2000.

Blume, Kenneth J. “Coal and Diplomacy in the British Caribbean during the Civil War,” Civil War History 41 no. 2 (June 1995): 116-141.

Campbell, Duncan Andrew. English Public Opinion and the American Civil War. Woodbridge, Suffolk: Royal Historical Society, 2003.

Dubrulle, Hugh. “A Military Legacy of the Civil War: The British Inheritance,” Civil War History 49, no. 2 (June 2003): 153-180.

—. Ambivalent Nation: How Britain Imagined the American Civil War. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2018.

Elkins, Caroline. Legacy of Violence: A History of the British Empire. New York: Knopf, 2022.

Foner, Philip. British Labor and the American Civil War. New York: Holmes & Meier, 1981.

Foreman, Amanda. A World on Fire: Britain’s Crucial Role in the American Civil War. New York: Random House, 2010.

Hughes, Michael F. “’The Personal Observations of a Man of Intelligence:’ Sir James Fergusson’s Visit to North America, 1861,” Civil War History 45, no. 3 (September 1999): 238-247.

Jenkins, Brian. Britain and the War for the Union. 2 vols. Montreal, Quebec: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1974-1960.

Jones, Howard. Union in Peril: The Crisis over British Intervention in the Civil War. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012.

Kinser, Brent E. The American Civil War in the Shaping of British Democracy. Farnham: Ashgate, 2011.

Logan, Frenise. “India – Britain’s Substitute for American Cotton, 1861-1865,” Journal of Southern History 24 (November 1958): 472-480.

Meyers, Philip. Caution and Cooperation: The American Civil War in British-American Relations. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 2008.

Mulligan, William. “Mobs and Diplomats: The Alabama Affair and British Diplomacy, 1865-1872” in The Diplomats’ World: A Cultural History of Diplomacy, 1815-1914, eds. Markus Mosslang and Torsten Riotte (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 105-132.

Myers, Phillip E. Caution and Cooperation: The American Civil War in British American Relations. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 2008.

O’Connor, Peter. American Sectionalism in the British Mind, 1832-1863. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2017.

Tal, Nimrod., “Putting Out the ‘Embers of This Resentment:’ Anglo-American Relations and the Rewriting of the British Response to the American Civil War, 1914-1925,” The Journal of the Civil War Era 8, no. 1 (March 2018): 87-110.

FRANCE

Belanger, Damien-Claude. Franco-Americans in the Civil War Era (1861-1865). Montreal: n.p., 2001.

Case, Lynn M., and Warren F. Spencer. The United States and France: Civil War Diplomacy. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1970.

Curtis, Eugene M. “American Opinion of the French Nineteenth Century Revolutions,” American Historical Review 29 (January 1924): 25-60.

Gavronsky, Serge. French Liberals and the American Civil War. New York: The Humanities Press, 1968.

Gray, Walter D. Interpreting American Democracy in France: The Career of Edouard Laboulaye, 1811-1883. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1994.

Katz, Philip M. From Appomattox to Montmartre: Americans and the Paris Commune. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998.

GERMANY

McGrane, Reginald C. “The American Position on the Revolution of 1848 in Germany,” Historical Outlook 11 (1920): 333-339.

SPAIN

Bowen, Wayne S. Spain and the American Civil War. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2011.

ITALY

Adams, Charles Francis. “Lincoln’s Offer to Garibaldi,” Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society 41 (1907-1908): 315-393.

Dal Lago, Enrico. “Lincoln, Cavour, and National Unification: American Republicanism and Italian Liberal Nationalism in Comparative Perspective,” The Journal of Civil War Era 3, no. 1 (March 2013): 85-113.

—. Civil War and Agrarian Unrest: The Confederate South and Southern Italy. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018.

Doyle, Don H. Nations Divided: America, Italy and the Southern Question. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2002.

Gay, H. Nelson. “Lincoln’s Offer of a Command to Garibaldi: Light on a Disputed Point of History,” Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine 75, no. 1 (November 1907): 63-74.

Gemme, Paola. Domesticating Foreign Struggles: The Italian Risorgimento and Antebellum American Identity. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2005.

CIVIL WAR ERA DIPLOMACY / FOREIGN POLICY

Baker, George., ed. The Works of William H. Seward in The Diplomatic History of the War for the Union. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1884.

Bonner, Robert E. “Slavery, Confederate Diplomacy, and the Racialist Mission of Henry Hotze,” Civil War History 51, no. 3 (September 2005): 288-316.

Carwardine, Richard, and Jay Sexton, eds. The Global Lincoln. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.

Chaffin, Tom. “Abe Lincoln and Filibuster Fever.” Disunion: The New York Times, January 10, 2011. Accessed on January 25, 2023. https://archive.nytimes.com/opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/10/abe-lincoln-and-filibuster-fever.

Crook, David Paul. The North, the South, and the Powers, 1860-1865. New York: Wiley, 1974.

—. Diplomacy during the Civil War. New York: Wiley, 1975.

Ferris, Norman B. Desperate Diplomacy: William H. Seward’s Foreign Policy, 1861. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1976.

Fry, Joseph A. Henry Sanford: Diplomacy and Business in Nineteenth-Century America. Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1982.

Green, Jennifer R., and Patrick M. Kirkwood. “Reframing the Antebellum Democratic Mainstream: Transatlantic Diplomacy and the Career of Pierre Soulé,” Civil War History 61, no. 3 (September 2015): 212-251.

Hubbard, Charles M. The Burden of Confederate Diplomacy. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1998.

—. “James Mason, the ‘Confederate Lobby’ and the Blockade Debate of March 1862,” Civil War History 45, no. 3 (September 1999): 223-237.

Jones, Howard. Abraham Lincoln and a New Birth of Freedom: The Union and Slavery in the Diplomacy of the Civil War. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999.

—. Blue and Gray Diplomacy: A History of Union and Confederate Foreign Relations. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016.

Karp, Matthew. This Vast Southern Empire: Slaveholders at the Helm of American Foreign Policy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016.

Mattson, Gregory Louis. “Pariah Diplomacy: The Slavery Issue in Confederate Foreign Relations.” PhD diss. University of Southern Mississippi, 1999.

Owsley, Frank Lawrence. King Cotton Diplomacy: Foreign Relations of the Confederate States of America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1959.

Palen, Marc-William. “The Civil War’s Forgotten Transatlantic Tariff Debate and the Confederacy’s Free Trade Diplomacy,” The Journal of the Civil War Era. 3, no. 1 (March 2013): 35-61.

Paolino, Ernest. The Foundations of the American Empire: Willian Henry Seward and U.S. Foreign Policy. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1973.

Peraino, Kevin. Lincoln in the World: The Making of a Statesman and the Dawn of American Power. New York: Crown, 2013.

Perkins, Dexter. The Monroe Doctrine, 1826-1867. Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1965.

Quigley, Paul, and James Hawdon, eds. Reconciliation After Civil War. Global Perspectives. Routledge Press, 2018.

Robinson, Michael. “William Henry Seward and the Onset of the Secession Crisis,” Civil War History 59, no. 1 (March 2013): 32-66.

Sexton, Jay. “Towards a Synthesis of Foreign Relations in the Civil War Era, 1848-1877,” American Nineteenth Century History. 5 (Fall 2004): 50-73.

—. The Monroe Doctrine: Empire and Nation in Nineteenth-Century America. New York: Hill & Wang, 2012.

—. “William H. Seward in the World,” The Journal of the Civil War Era 4, no. 3 (September 2014): 398-430.

—. “The Civil War and U.S. World Power” in American Civil Wars: The United States, Latin America, Europe and the Crisis of the 1860s. Edited by Don H. Doyle. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017.

Seward, William H., and Olive Risley Seward. William H. Seward’s Travels around the World. New York: D. Appleton, 1873

Stahr, Walter. Seward: Lincoln Indispensable Man. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2012.

Taylor, John. William Henry Seward: Lincoln’s Right Hand. New York: HarperCollins, 1991.

Tyrner-Tyrnauer, A.R. Lincoln and the Emperors. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1962.

Warren, Gordon H. Fountain of Discontent: The Trent Affair and Freedom of the Seas. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1981.

Whitaker, Arthur P. “The Origins of the Western Hemisphere Idea,” Proceedings of the American Philosophy Society 98 (October 15, 1954): 323.

TRANSNATIONAL HISTORY – ANTEBELLUM, WARTIME, POSTWAR

Ayers, Edward L. “The American Civil War, Emancipation, and Reconstruction on the World Stage,” OAH Magazine of History 20, no. 1 (January 2006): 54-61.

Beckert, Sven. “Emancipation and Empire: Reconstructing the Worldwide Web of Cotton Production in the Age of the American Civil War,” American Historical Review 109 (December 2004): 1405-1438.

Bolton, Herbert E. “The Epic of Greater America,” American Historical Review 38 (April 1933): 448-474.

Bonner, Robert E. “The Salt Water Civil War: Thalassological Approaches, Ocean-Centered Opportunities,” The Journal of the Civil War Era 6, no. 2 (June 2016): 243-267.

Brettle, Adrian. Colonial Ambitions: Confederate Planning for a Post-Civil War World. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2020.

Brown, Charles H. Agents of Manifest Destiny: The Lives and Times of the Filibusters. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980.

Cummins, Light T. “Getting beyond Bolton: Columbian Consequences and the Spanish Borderland, A Review Essay,” New Mexico Historical Review 70 (April 1995): 201-215.

Curti, Merle. “The Impact of the Revolutions of 1848 on American Thought,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 93 (1949): 209-215.

Davis, William C. “Confederate Exiles.” American History Illustrated 5, no. 3 (June 1970): 30-43.

Doyle, Don H., ed. Secession as an International Phenomenon: From America’s Civil War to Contemporary Separatist Movements. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2010.

—. The Cause of All Nations: An International History of the American Civil War. New York: Basic Books, 2015.

Egerton, Douglas R. “Rethinking Atlantic Historiography in a Postcolonial Era: The Civil War in a Global Perspective,” The Journal of the Civil War Era 1, no. 1 (March 2011): 79-95.

Eichhorn, Niels. “North Atlantic Trade in the Mid-Nineteenth Century: A Case for Peace during the American Civil War,” Civil War History 1, no. 2 (June 2015): 138-172.

Fleche, Andre. “The American Civil War in the Age of Revolution,” South Central Review 33 no. 1 (Spring 2016): 5-20.

—. Revolution of 1861: The American Civil War in the Age of Nationalist Conflict. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011.

Graber, Samuel S. “Twice Divided Nation: The Civil War and National Memory in the Transatlantic World,” 2 vols. (PhD diss., University of Iowa, 2008).

Graybill, Andrew R. “Civil Wars and Their Soldiers in the Southwest Borderlands,” Reviews in American History 46, no. 4 (December 2018): 586-591.

Greenberg, Amy S. Manifest Manhood and Antebellum American Empire. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005.

—. Manifest Destiny and American Territorial Expansion: A Brief History with Documents. New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2012.

Guterl, Matthew Pratt. American Mediterranean: Southern Slaveholders in the Age of Emancipation. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008.

Hahn, Steven. “What Sort of World Did the Civil War Make?” in The World the Civil War Made. Edited by Gregory P. Downs and Kate Masur. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015.

Hammond, John Craig. “Slavery, Sovereignty, and Empires: North American Borderlands and the American Civil War,” The Journal of the Civil War Era 4, no 2 (June 2014): 264-298.

Honeck, Mischa. “Men of Principle: Gender and the German American War for the Union,” The Journal of the Civil War Era 5, no. 1 (March 2015): 38-67.

Johnson, Benjamin H., and Andrew R. Graybill, eds. Bridging National Borders in North America: Transnational and Comparative Histories. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2010.

Kaye, Anthony E. “The Second Slavery: Modernity in the Nineteenth-Century South and the Atlantic World,” The Journal of Southern History 75 (August 2009): 627-50.

Keehn, David C. Knights of the Golden Circle: Secret Empire, Southern Secession, Civil War. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2013.

Kelly, Patrick J. “The North American Crisis of the 1860s,” The Journal of the Civil War Era 2, no. 3 (September 2012): 337-368.

—. “1848 and the Transnational Turn in Civil War History,” The Journal of the Civil War Era 4, no. 3 (September 2014): 431-443.

LaFeber, Walter. The New Empire: An Interpretation of American Expansion, 1860-1898. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1963.

Lewis, Kay Wright. A Curse upon the Nation: Race, Freedom and Extermination in America and the Atlantic World. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2017.

Lonn, Ella. Foreigners in the Confederacy. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002.

McDaniel, W. Caleb, and Bethany L. Johnson. “New Approaches to Internationalizing the History of the Civil War Era: An Introduction,” The Journal of the Civil War Era 2, no. 2 (June 2012): 145-150.

McPherson, James. “‘The Whole Family of Man:’ Lincoln and the Last Best Hope Abroad” in The Union, the Confederacy and the Atlantic Rim. Edited by Robert May. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 1995.

Mahin, Dean P. One War at a Time: The International Dimensions of the U.S. Civil War. Washington, D.C.: Brassey’s, 1999.

May, Robert E., ed. The Union, the Confederacy, and the Atlantic Rim. West Lafayette, Ind.: Purdue University Press, 1995.

Morrison, Michael A. “American Reaction to European Revolutions, 1848-1852: Sectionalism, Memory, and the Revolutionary Heritage,” Civil War History 49, no. 2 (June 2003): 111-132.

Potter, David M. The South and the Sectional Conflict. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1968.

—. “Civil War,” in The Comparative Approach to American History. Edited by C. Van Woodward. New York: Basic Books, 1968.

Roberts, Timothy Mason. Distant Revolutions: 1848 and the Challenge to American Exceptionalism. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2009.

Rood, Daniel B. The Reinvention of Atlantic Slavery: Technology, Labor, Race, and Capitalism in the Greater Caribbean. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017.

Schoen, Brian. The Fragile Fabric of Union: Cotton, Federal Politics, and the Global Origins of the Civil War. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009.

—. “The Fates of Republics and Empires Hang in the Balance: The United States and Europe during the Civil War Era,” OAH Magazine of History 27, no. 2 (April 2013): 45.

Sexton, Jay. “Steam Transport, Sovereignty, and Empire in North America, circa 1850-1885,” The Journal of the Civil War Era 7, no. 4 (December 2017): 620-647.

Tucker, Ann L. Newest Born of Nations: European Nationalist Movements and the Making of the Confederacy. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2020.

Walther, Karine V. Sacred Interests: The United States and the Islamic World, 1821-1921. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015.

Weeks, William Earl. Building the Continental Empire: American Expansion from Revolution to the Civil War. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1996.

Zimmerman, Andrew. “From the Rhine to the Mississippi: Property, Democracy, and Socialism in the American Civil War,” The Journal of the Civil War Era 5, no. 1 (March 2015): 3-37.

—. “From the Second American Revolution to the First International and Back Again: Marxism, the Popular Front, and the American Civil War” in The World the Civil War Made. Edited by Gregory P. Downs and Kate Masur. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015.

GENERAL WORKS

Baptist, Edward E. The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism. New York: Basic Books, 2014.

Bayly, C.A. The Birth of the Modern World, 1780-1914: Global Connections and Comparisons. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2004: 165-166.

Beckert, Sven, “Merchants and Manufacturers in the Antebellum North” in Ruling America: A History of Wealth and Power in a Democracy. Edited by Steve Fraser and Gary Gerstle. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005.

—. Empire of Cotton: A Global History. New York: Knopf, 2014.

—. Capitalism: A Global History. New York: Penguin, 2025.

Bender, Thomas, ed. Rethinking American History in a Global Age. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002.

—. A Nation Among Nations: America’s Place in World History. New York: Hill and Wang, 2006.

Bensel, Richard Franklin. Yankee Leviathan: The Origins of Central State Authority in America, 1859-1877. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990.

Blair, William. “Imagining a Hemispheric Greater America,” The Journal of the Civil War Era 7, no. 4 (December 2017): 507-511.

Bledsoe, Andrew S. “Beyond the Chessboard of War: Contingency, Command and Generalship in Civil War Military History,” The Journal of the Civil War Era 9, no. 2 (June 2019): 275-301.

Boritt, Gabor S., Mark E. Neely Jr., and Harold Holzer, “The European Image of Abraham Lincoln,” Winterthur Portfolio 21 (Summer-Autumn 1986): 158-160.

Browning, Judkin, and Timothy Silver. “Nature and Human Nature: Environmental Influences on the Union’s Failed Peninsula Campaign, 1862.” The Journal of the Civil War Era 8, no. 3 (September 2018): 388-415.

Colby, Robert. “Negroes Will Bear Fabulous Prices.” The Journal of the Civil War Era 10, no. 4 (December 2020): 439-468.

Davis, David Brion. Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.

Faust, Drew Gilpin. Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War. Durham, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 2004.

Fogel, Robert William. Without Consent or Contract: The Rise and Fall of American Slavery. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1994.

Foster, Gaines M. “What’s Not in a Name.” The Journal of the Civil War Era 8, no. 3 (September 2018): 416-454.

Geyer, Michael, and Charles Bright. “Global Violence and Nationalizing Wars in Eurasia and America: The Geo Politics of War in the Mid-Nineteenth Century,” Comparative Studies in History and Society 38, no. 4, (October 1996): 619-657.

Goldfield, David. America Aflame: How the Civil War Created a Nation. New York: Bloomsbury, 2011.

Grandin, Greg. “The Liberal Tradition in the Americas: Rights, Sovereignty, and the Origins of Multilateralism,” American Historical Review 117 (February 2012): 68-91.

Greene, Jack P., and Philip D. Morgan, eds. Atlantic History: A Critical Reappraisal. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.

Grimsley, Mark, and Brooks D. Simpson, eds. The Collapse of the Confederacy. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001.

Guterl, Matthew. American Mediterranean: Southern Slaveholders in the Age of Emancipation. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008.

Hamalainen, Pekka. The Comanche Empire. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009.

—, and Samuel Truett. “On Borderlands,” The Journal of American History 98, no. 2 (September 2011): 338-361.

Hunt, Aurora. The Army of the Pacific: Its Operations in California, Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, Plains Region, Mexico, etc. 1860-1866. Glendale, CA: Arthur H. Clark, 1951.

Hunt, Jeffrey William. The Last Battle of the Civil War: Palmetto Ranch. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002.

Johnson, Walter. Soul By Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000.

—. River of Dark Dreams: Slavery and Empire in the Cotton Kingdom. Cambridge, MA.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2013.

Jones, Howard. Crucible of Power: A History of American Foreign Relations to 1913. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2009.

Kerby, Robert L. Kirby Smith’s Confederacy: The Trans-Mississippi South, 1863-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1972.

Lang, Andrew F. “Memory, the Texas Revolution, and Secession: The Birth of Confederate Nationalism in the Lone Star State,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 114, no. 1 (July 2010): 21-36.

Langley, Lester D. The Americans in the Age of Revolution, 1750-1850. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996.

Levine, Bruce. The Spirit of 1848: German Immigrants, Labor Conflict, and the Coming of the Civil War. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1992.

Lincoln, Abraham. The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln. Edited by Roy P. Basler. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1953-1955.

McPherson, James M. Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.

Marvel, William. The Alabama and the Kearsarge: The Sailor’s Civil War. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000.

Morrison, Michael A. Slavery and the American West: The Eclipse of Manifest Destiny and the Coming of the Civil War. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997.

Nelson, Megan Kate. “Death in the Distance: Confederate Manifest Destiny and the Campaign for New Mexico, 1861-1862” in Civil War Tests: Testing the Limits of the United States. Edited by Adam Arenson and Andrew R. Graybill. Oakland: University of California Press, 2015.

Prior, David M. et. al. “Teaching the Civil War in Global Context: A Discussion,” The Journal of the Civil War Era 5, no. 1 (March 2015): 126-153.

Reynolds, Larry J. Righteous Violence: Revolution, Slavery, and the American Renaissance. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2011.

Richardson, Heather Cox. West From Appomattox: The Reconstruction of America after the Civil War. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007.

Rothman, Adam, “The Slave Power in the United States, 1783-1865” in Ruling America: A History of Wealth and Power in a Democracy. Edited by Steve Fraser and Gary Gerstle. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005.

Rubin, Anne Sarah. A Shattered Nation: The Rise and Fall of the Confederacy, 1861-1868. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007.

Rugemer, Edward B. “Slave Rebels and Abolitionists: The Black Atlantic and the Coming of the Civil War,” The Journal of the Civil War Era 2, no. 2 (June 2012): 179-202.

San Antonio Ledger. July 28, 1853.

Stokes, Donald. The Grand Design: Strategy and the U.S. Civil War. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.

Silverman, Jason H. Lincoln and the Immigrant. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 2015.

Thomas, Emory M. The Confederacy as a Revolutionary Experience. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1971.

Townsend, Stephen A. The Yankee Invasion of Texas. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2006.

Tucker, Phillip Thomas. The Final Fury: Palmito Ranch, The Last Battle of the Civil War. Mechanicsburg, Pa.: Stackpole Books, 2001.

U.S. War Department. The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. Washington D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1880-1901.

For the New Era

VOLUME I
Mansion on a Hill (live) :: Bruce Springsteen
The Way It Was :: Mark Snow
A Change Is Gonna Come :: Sam Cooke
I Know :: Fiona Apple
Sonata for Cello & Piano in G Minor :: Frederic Chopin
Stillness of Heart :: Lenny Kravitz
Ceremony :: Tom Vedvik
Cruisin’ :: Huey Lewis and the News with Gwyneth Paltrow
Cherry Blossoms :: Dominic Lewis
Over My Head :: Fleetwood Mac
Death Letter :: Cassandra Wilson
Don’t Be Cruel :: Billy Swan
I Shall Be Released :: Nina Simone
You Are My Sunshine :: Alan O’Bryant
Melissa (live) :: The Allman Brothers Band
Southern Cross :: Crosby, Stills & Nash
Body and Soul :: Coleman Hawkins
New San Antonio Rose :: Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys
I’ll Fly Away :: Gillian Welch & Alison Krauss
Stolen Car :: Bruce Springsteen

VOLUME II
Don’t Fence Me In :: Darla Hawn
Los Tiempos Van Cambiando :: Franky Perez
In My Room :: Jakob Dylan & Fiona Apple
The Old Ship of Zion :: The Roberta Martin Singers
Tom Traubert’s Blues (live) :: Rod Stewart
Piano Sonata No. 14 in C Sharp Minor :: Ludwig van Beethoven
Hands of Time :: Groove Armada
Spinning :: Zero 7
Holding Back the Years (jazz version) :: Simply Red
Mandolin Rain :: Bruce Hornsby & The Range
Angel Band :: Molly Mason & Russ Barenburg
There’s a River :: Steve Winwood
Dos Gardenias :: Ibrahim Ferrer
Will the Circle Be Unbroken :: June Carter Cash
Running on Faith (Unplugged) :: Eric Clapton
Always On My Mind :: Willie Nelson
Oliver :: Richard Marvin
Preludes, Opus 28-#17 in AB Major :: Frederic Chopin & Roy Eaton
Forbidden Love :: Madonna
Angel :: Rod Stewart

VOLUME III
You Go To My Head :: Billie Holiday
So Was Red :: Thomas Newman
Have You Ever Seen the Rain :: Willie Nelson & Paula Nelson
Serenata de Amor :: Jaime R. Echavarria
Little Wing :: Sting
Piano Concerto No. 5 in E Flat Major II :: Ludwig van Beethoven & Helene Grimaud
Anyone Who Knows What Love Is :: Irma Thomas
Take Me :: Mable John
Goodbye :: Emmylou Harris
Protection :: Massive Attack
I’d Rather Go Blind :: Chicken Shack with Christine McVie
Watermark :: Enya
Save the Last Dance for Me :: The Drifters
Wichita Lineman :: Glen Campbell
Heart of the Heartland :: Peter Ostroushko
Radiation Ruling the Nation :: Massive Attack
River :: Leon Bridges
Sleepwalk :: Santo & Johnny
Balderrama :: Mercedes Sosa
Heaven :: Simply Red

VOLUME IV
Ruler of My Heart :: Irma Thomas (check out a sultrier version here.)
Live to Tell :: Madonna
Farewell Daddy Blues :: Margot Bingham & David Mansfield
I Cover the Waterfront :: John Lee Hooker (for Crosetti)
I Only Have Eyes for You :: The Flamingos
Pretty Ballerina :: The Left Banke
Silencio :: Ibrahim Ferrer & Omara Portuondo
Teardrop :: Massive Attack
Happy :: Bruce Springsteen
And I Love Her :: The Beatles
One More Night :: Phil Collins
La Ultima Copa :: Felipe Rodriguez
Tell It Like It Is :: Aaron Neville
Nearer My God to Thee :: I Salonisti
Danny’s Song :: Neko Case
I’d Rather Go Blind :: Rod Stewart
Straight From the Heart :: Irma Thomas
Sundown :: Gordon Lightfoot
Take a Bow :: Madonna
Songbird :: Fleetwood Mac

VOLUME V
One Step Up :: Bruce Springsteen
That’s All Right :: Mighty Joe Young
These Dreams :: Heart
There Is Something on Your Mind :: Big Jay McNeely
I’m on Fire :: Bruce Springsteen
Morning Has Broken :: Cat Stevens
I’d Rather Go Blind :: Etta James
Linger :: The Cranberries
Suds on the Roof :: Thomas Newman
Time After Time :: Cyndi Lauper
Air :: Johann Sebastian Bach, Cuba Percussion & Klazz Brothers
Ain’t Wastin’ Time No More :: The Allman Brothers Band
The Space Between :: Zero 7
La Sitiera :: Omara Portuondo
Please Come Home for Christmas :: The Eagles
Something (live) :: Norah Jones
These Ain’t Raindrops :: James Carr
Doin’ Time :: Lana Del Rey
Stardust :: Django Reinhardt
Holding Back the Years :: Simply Red

VOLUME VI
Carry Me :: Chris DeBurgh
Don’t Dream It’s Over :: Crowded House
Dream A Little Dream of Me :: The Mamas & The Papas
Can’t Find My Way Way Home :: Blind Faith
Don’t :: Zoe Kravitz
Everywhen :: Massive Attack
It’s Raining :: Irma Thomas
Come Live with Me :: Stacey Kent & The Vile Bodies
Give Me One Reason :: Tracy Chapman
That’s How Strong My Love Is :: Otis Redding
I Shall Believe :: Sheryl Crow
Why Try to Change Me Now :: Fiona Apple
Playground Love :: Air
Nisi Dominus :: Antonio Vivaldi & Andreas Scholl
The Single Petal of a Rose :: Duke Ellington
My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys :: Willie Nelson
Gotta Get Away :: Harry Krapsho
Into the Mystic :: Van Morrison
Carefree Highway :: Gordon Lightfoot
Little Bird :: Annie Lennox

Click here to listen to this playlist on Spotify or scan the QR code below.

Recommended reading / viewing / listening

This week: The resilience of U.S. democracy / Preparing for death out of a love for life / The magic of kokedama / Amanda Shires builds her post-divorce life / ‘Platoon’ was Charlie Sheen’s Vietnam

Most of these items come from my social media networks. Follow me on BlueSky, Instagram, Tumblr, LinkedIn, and Facebook for more fascinating videos, photos, articles, essays, and criticism. Learn more about my academic background here and about me here.

1. Six Ways to Start Early and Lift Your Mood
By Arthur C. Brooks | The Atlantic | September 2025
“Try my protocol for a happy start to the day and see what works for your own well-being.”

2. Transform your houseplants into art with this Japanese gardening technique
By Jessica Damiano | Associated Press | September 2025
“The Japanese method of growing plants in a living planter made of a moss-covered ball of soil, is a simple, DIY project that elevates common houseplants into works of art. They make great gifts, too.”

3. Amanda Shires Tells Her Side of the Story After Divorce From Jason Isbell: ‘I’m Not Scared’
By Natalie Weiner | Texas Monthly | September 2025
“The Lubbock-raised singer-songwriter-fiddler’s new album, Nobody’s Girl, is a raw and revealing look at falling out of love and finding resilience.”

4. I Tested How Well AI Tools Work for Journalism
By Hilke Schellmann | Columbia Journalism Review | August 2025
“Some tools were sufficient for summarizing meetings. For research, the results were a disaster.”

5. American Democracy Might Be Stronger Than Donald Trump
By Jonathan Schlefer | Politico Magazine | September 2025
“Yes, Donald Trump is a threat to democracy. But the country has a few attributes that make it more resilient than you might think.”

6. We Are Watching a Scientific Superpower Destroy Itself
By Stephen Greenblatt | The New York Times | September 2025
“We are currently governed by a leader indifferent to scientific consensus if it contradicts his political or economic interests, hostile to immigrants and intent on crippling the research universities that embody our collective hope for the future. The menace now is within. And with very few exceptions, the leaders of American universities have done little more than duck and cover.”

7. ‘I love life:’ The man who has scheduled his death so he can enjoy living
By Amandas Ong | Al Jazeera | September 2025
“Despite Alzheimer’s, Alex Pandolfo leads a full life. But when his health declines, he plans to have an assisted death.”

8. Historian Jill Lepore explores the Constitution and its interpretations in ‘We the People’
By Geoff Bennett | PBS News Hour | September 2025
“Originalism is often countered by the idea that the Constitution is a living, breathing document meant to be interpreted and changed along with the times.”

9. What If the Next Democratic President Governs Like Trump?
By Matt Ford | The New Republic | September 2025
“Between a permissive Supreme Court and his own governing innovations, the president has greatly expanded executive power. Liberals, take note.”

10. Cats and Dogs in History
By Christopher Rose, Joan Neuberger and Henry Wiencek | 15 Minute History :: UT Department of History | 2014-2020
Also see: Indian Ocean Trade and European Dominance | Indian Ocean Trade from its Origins to the Eve of Imperialism | Ukraine and Russia | Urban Slavery in the Antebellum United States

11. Charlie Sheen’s Lifestyle Couldn’t Kill Him. ‘Platoon’ Nearly Did.
By Charlie Sheen | The Hollywood Reporter | September 2025
“In 1986, well before the sex scandals, the crack and the tiger blood, the 20-year-old actor embarked on the most intense shoot of his career. In an excerpt from his explosive new memoir, Sheen reveals how Oliver Stone’s epic Vietnam War film changed him forever.”

12. Theaters bet big on massive screens, booming sound and recliners to lure movie fans
By Harshita Mary Varghese and Dawn Chmielewski | Reuters | September 2025
“Auditoriums with enhanced visual and video formats, such as IMAX, Dolby Cinema, and ScreenX, account for a record 14.9% of all tickets sold in the U.S. and Canada this year, up from 9.8% in 2019, according to data from research firm Comscore exclusively compiled for Reuters.”

13. Orchid Fever
By Susan Orlean | The New Yorker | January 1995
“How seductive are orchids? Connoisseurs spare nothing for a rare bloom — the issue in a battle between Florida, the Seminoles, and a man with a passion.”

14. The South’s Inner Civil War
By Eric Foner | American Heritage | Summer 2025
“The more fiercely the Confederacy fought for its independence, the more bitterly divided it became. To fully understand the vast changes which the war unleashed on the country, you must first understand the plight of the Southerners who didn’t want secession.”

15. 6 More Things E.R. Doctors Wish You’d Avoid
By Jancee Dunn | Well :: The New York Times | September 2025
“Stay out of the emergency room with these tips.”

16. Strawberries in Winter
By Adrienne LaFrance | The Atlantic | September 2025
“Most Americans do not want civil war. Anyone who is declaring it should stop.”

17. Why your nose could be the perfect window into your mental state
By Gillian Forrester | New Scientist | September 2025
“Diagnosing mental health conditions like anxiety and depression can be difficult, but it turns out that your nose could help doctors understand when you are feeling the strain.”

18. ‘We wanted to make it real:’ How ‘Goodfellas’ reinvented the gangster film
By Myles Burke | BBC Culture | September 2025
“Martin Scorsese’s crime epic was released 35 years ago. In 1990, the director and his stars, Robert De Niro and Ray Liotta, revealed its secrets to the BBC.”

19. Laughing in Hell: How We Tell the Stories of Other Peoples’ Suicides
By Sarah Adler | LitHub | September 2025
“I was drawn to memoirs about suicide even before Rebecca’s death, probably because when someone you love travels often against the thin curtain between life and death, these stories can feel like windows.”

20. Echolocation
By Melvyn Bragg | In Our Time :: BBC 4 | 2016-2018
Also see: Animal Farm | Agrippina the Younger | The Sikh Empire | The Gettysburg Address

    Recommended reading / viewing / listening

    This week: The secrets retreating glaciers reveal / A 19th century woman predicted global warming / A new forest in the heart of Baghdad / A Texas scream club lets out all the feels / The 2025 National Book Awards longlist unveiled

    Continue reading “Recommended reading / viewing / listening”

    Recommended reading / viewing / listening

    This week: Loving books about books / NATO bolsters its eastern flank / The battles Kamala Harris fought / Heartbreak in Woodrow Wilson’s letters / The ancient Peruvian city that could change history

    This week: Loving books about books / NATO bolsters its eastern flank / The battles Kamala Harris fought / Heartbreak in Woodrow Wilson’s letters / The ancient Peruvian city that could change history

    Most of these great items come from my social media networks. Follow me on BlueSky, Instagram, Tumblr, LinkedIn, and Facebook for more fascinating videos, photos, articles, essays, and criticism. Learn more about my academic background here and about me here.

    1. What does ‘luxury’ mean today?
    By Rachel Tashjian | The Washington Post | September 2025
    “Luxury for some is a subdued secret language of wealth, the knowledge of the right restaurants, sweater brands, natural deodorants or matcha orders; for others, it’s an Oval Office freshly festooned in gold. Whether that gold is 24 karat or plastic from Home Depot may destroy the illusion completely, or may not matter at all.”

    2. 28 new movies worth checking out this fall
    By Linda Holmes, Aisha Harris, Glen Weldon, and Bob Mondello | What to Watch :: NPR | September 2025
    “The weather’s turning cooler, back-to-school shopping’s all done and, sure, you could rake the leaves, but wouldn’t it be more fun to escape to your local cinema?”

    3. Pandemic love story: The whims of Kevin, our neighbors’ cat
    By Solvej Schou | Associated Press | September 2021
    “His routine was always the same: He would suddenly show up, stare at us with a silent urgent meow, and then walk back and forth rubbing his face on our wooden porch bench. He would allow us to bend down and pet him with long strokes. It always seemed like a privilege to pet him: this deeply affectionate neighbors cat who was as shiny and new to us as we were to him.”

    4. The human cost of witnessing violence online
    By: Ren LaForme | Poynter | September 2025
    “I was 14 when I found the murder video of a journalist on a file-sharing site. Today, violence finds us before we can look away.”

    5. The Art of Pondering Earth’s Distant Future
    By Vincent Ialenti | Scientific American | August 2021
    “Stretching the mind across time can help us become more responsible planetary stewards and foster empathy across generations.”

    6. ‘Publish or perish’ evolutionary pressures shape scientific publishing, for better and worse
    By Thomas Morgan | The Conversation | September 2025
    “Culture shapes everything people do, not least scientific practice – how scientists decide what questions to ask and how to answer them. Good scientific practices lead to public benefits, while poor scientific practices waste time and money.”

    7. The Constant Battle
    By Kamala Harris | The Atlantic | September 2025
    “The first excerpt from 107 Days.”

    8. The newly discovered desert city that’s rewriting the history of the Americas
    By Heather Jasper | BBC Travel | September 2025
    “On Peru’s desert hillsides, archaeologists have uncovered a 3,800-year-old city that may reshape our understanding of the cradle of civilisation in the Americas.”

    9. The Greatest Danger in the Taiwan Strait
    By Joel Wuthnow | Foreign Affairs | September 2025
    “Even If China Avoids a War of Choice, a Miscalculation Could Spark a War of Chance”

    10. The Joy of Reading Books About Books
    By Susan Coll | LitHub | September 2025
    “Books about books, or bookstores, or people who work in bookstores, or in publishing, or in libraries, or anything book-adjacent, are not in short supply, perhaps for the obvious reason that writers are by definition people who are drawn to, and often write about, books.”

    11. What I See As a Midwife for Pregnant Women in ICE Detention
    By Andrea González-Ramírez | The Cut :: New York Magazine | September 2025
    “One pregnant woman in detention recently said that she’d lost 25 pounds in just a month.”

    12. 21 Nonfiction Books Coming This Fall
    By Miguel Salazar and Laura Thompson | The New York Times | September 2025
    “This year’s lineup includes celebrity memoirs, secret Nazi histories, Renaissance biographies, a prismatic group of true crime offerings and immersive reporting on social movements past and present.”

    13. NATO to beef up defence of Europe’s eastern flank after Poland shot down drones
    By Andrew Gray, Barbara Erling and Michelle Nichols | Reuters | September 2025
    “At the United Nations, the United States called the airspace violations ‘alarming’ and vowed to ‘defend every inch of NATO territory,’ remarks that appeared aimed at assuaging Washington’s NATO allies after President Donald Trump said Russia’s drone incursion could have been a mistake.”

    14. How Fear Killed Liberalism
    By Stephen M. Walt | Foreign Policy | September 2025
    “Political anxieties have piled up and put an end to an era of public optimism.”

    15. ICE’s colonial disgrace shakes Puerto Rico
    By Belinés Ramos Negrón | Ojala | July 2025
    “People who migrate to Puerto Rico — by choice or by force — in the face of colonial, necropatriarchal, capitalist, and racist states arrive to encounter even more state discrimination and abandonment. This is especially true for our siblings from the Dominican Republic.”

    16. How thousands of ‘overworked, underpaid’ humans train Google’s AI to seem smart
    By Varsha Bansal | The Guardian | September 2025
    “Contracted AI raters describe grueling deadlines, poor pay and opacity around work to make chatbots intelligent.”

    17. Presidential Papers — Love and Heartbreak, War and Politics
    By Wendi Maloney | The Library of Congress | June 2021
    “Researchers using [Woodrow] Wilson s papers at the Library may be surprised to encounter the private — and passionate — Wilson behind the formal and somewhat aloof public figure they recall from history books or World War I-era film footage.”

    18. James Webb Space Telescope images enormous star shooting out twin jets 8 light-years long
    By Keith Cooper | Space.com | September 2025
    “The beams hint at the true scale of the massive star that spawned them.”

    19. La dolce vita: Tuxedos at Dawn
    By Gary Giddins | The Criterion Collection | October 2014
    “Today the film s revolutionary purview may appear tame, especially themes that rankled the church and bluenoses: moral decay, moneyed monotony, religious irreverence, loveless coupling. Detractors complain that the film isn’t shocking anymore — that time has reduced it to little more than a fascinating souvenir of another day.”

    20. Is Shakespeare History? The Romans
    By Melvyn Bragg | In Our Time :: BBC 4 | 2015-2016
    Also see: Al-Ghazali | Eleanor of Aquitaine | Rumi’s Poetry | Mary Magdalene

    Have a rum cake

    This is a recipe for the Dan Mudd Rum Cake, one of my all-time favorite desserts, named after a former colleague from the Corpus Christi Caller-Times.

    This is a recipe for the Dan Mudd Rum Cake, one of my all-time favorite desserts, named after a former colleague from the Corpus Christi Caller-Times.

    I made one this morning. It gets better and better every year.

    Enjoy.

    The cake:
    — 1 cup pecans, halved or coarsely chopped
    — 1 package of yellow cake mix, any brand but not a pudding mix
    — 1 package of instant vanilla pudding mix
    — 4 medium or large eggs (not extra-large or jumbo)
    — 1/4 cup cold water
    — 1/2 cup vegetable oil
    — 1/2 cup of rum (any kind of rum, but do not use a Jamaican-type of rum)

    Directions
    — Preheat oven to 325F degrees
    — Grease and flour 10-inch tube (angel-food type) pan
    — Sprinkle nuts over bottom of pan
    — Mix all cake ingredients
    — Pour batter over nuts
    — Bake for about 40 minutes
    — Cool for about 30 minutes
    — Make glaze while cake is cooling
    — Prick deeply all over the top of the cake with a toothpick or thin knife
    — Drizzle and smooth glaze evenly over top and sides, allowing glaze to soak into cake
    — Keep spooning the glaze over cake until all glaze has been absorbed
    — After all has cooled at room temperature, run knife along edge of cake and along center tube, and remove cake from pan

    The glaze (make while cake is cooling)
    — 1/2 cup of butter or 1/2 cup stick oleo (do not use tub or watered-down soft spread)
    — 1/4 cup of water
    — 1 cup of sugar
    — 1/4 cup of rum

    Directions
    — Melt butter or oleo in a medium-sized saucepan
    — Stir in water and sugar
    — Boil for five minutes, stirring constantly
    — Remove from heat and cool slightly
    — Stir in rum slowly
    — While warm, spoon over cake

    It’s only the beginning of the intellectual journey

    I don’t consider myself particularly wise or much of a role model, but I thought I had a few guiding principles that might be useful, if only because history, journalism and fiction are my passions too.

    I was reviewing old emails the other day, and I came across a letter I wrote to a young college student who asked for my advice. He was considering joining his college newspaper. He also hoped to pursue an academic career as a historian and maybe dabble in writing historical fiction. He was worried he couldn’t do it all.

    Now, I don’t consider myself particularly wise or much of a role model, but I thought I had a few guiding principles that might be useful, if only because history, journalism and fiction are my passions too.

    Here’s shortened and edited version of what I said.

    ******

    Thank you for reaching out. It sounds like you’re taking the right perspective and asking the right questions. My overall advice is this: Stick with journalism and see where it takes you. Does this mean you can’t be a historian? No. It will make you a better historian and academic writer. Does this mean you can’t be a fiction writer? Absolutely not. It will make you a clear thinker and writer.

    I was always shy, but I realized early in life that I enjoyed expressing myself through the written word. When I was in my teens or early twenties, I read about Theodore Roosevelt and the many different passions he pursued throughout his life, and I decided I would be someone like that. I decided that my life would focus on three overall passions. I decided that I wanted to be remembered as a journalist, as a historian and as a historical novelist.

    I started writing in college newspapers at Del Mar College in Corpus Christi (The Foghorn) and at the University of Texas at Austin (The Daily Texan). I wrote book reviews, reviewed theater performances and movies, and contributed op-ed pieces. I was already deeply interested in history, and I convinced the editors at the Texan to let me write an occasional column on history. Ironically, I wasn’t interested in straight reporting and was too shy to speak to strangers, so I never became a reporter. I worked as a proofreader — what they call a copy editor — and as a page designer.

    After college, I eventually got a job at the Corpus Christi Caller-Times. No matter how accomplished you may be, always swallow your pride and start at the bottom — I started as a news assistant and junior copy editor — and work your way up. I did this even in college. Step by step. Prove yourself to your colleagues and to yourself. Learn everything you can from everyone — they all know something you don’t.

    Figure out how each job and experience can help you move on to the next job and take on the challenge. The college newspaper jobs helped me get the Caller-Times job. The Caller-Times job led to a similar job at the San Antonio Express-News. That editing and writing experience was invaluable in graduate school at Texas A&M-Corpus Christi and at the University of Texas at San Antonio. After several years in academics, as you know, I’m now an editor at Texas Public Radio. …

    I had always been interested in current events and foreign affairs. I always saw journalism and history as two halves of the same heart, the two ends of the same spectrum of civilization. I had an old-fashioned idea that all smart people — writers, scientists, athletes, anyone — should all spend at least a year working in some capacity at a newspaper. It’s a great place to learn how to write clearly and succinctly. Experience the constant flow of information all around you and through you. Understand the value of journalism in a democracy. I equated journalism to public service or military service — an enriching challenge that benefits everyone. That’s what motivated me to enter journalism and become an editor. I feel it is noble work, just as noble as being a teacher. You are really making a difference as a journalist. I wish more people would participate in the industry. I wish it was better funded.

    Working in a newspaper taught me to pay close attention to details and maintain a consistent sense of what’s important and what isn’t. It strengthened my capacity to deal with all kinds of different people and personalities and deepened my sympathy for the less fortunate, those without a voice, those who need help. You can’t be afraid of a newsroom’s chaos, and you have to have faith that you can bring a semblance of order to it all. Always view problems and setbacks as opportunities. Always.

    You’ve got your foot in the door at the student newspaper. Stay with it. Work for free. Work for the experience. Work at one job, then at another, then another. Build up a body of experience and a body of work. Work in different departments. Figure what you don’t like doing and what you really like to do. Write book reviews. Learn about the newspaper’s website. If you want to work at a professional newspaper or radio station, bring them a wide variety of examples of the work you’ve done in college. That will take time but it’s doable and worth every second of effort. Talk to journalism professors and to the leaders of the college newspaper or radio station. When you have time, see if professional newspapers/news web sites need help from a smart college journalist. That’s great experience too.

    The great advantage of staying with journalism is this: The field has space for and needs all kinds of different, smart people to illustrate and explain the world for everyone else. Also, don’t assume that once you enter journalism you will be a journalist forever. Learn about science, literature, law, history, engineering, politics and other subjects. Let journalism be the foundation upon which you build a life filled with different experiences, different expertise and different ambitions. Becoming an effective journalist — editor, reporter, whatever — is only the beginning of your intellectual journey.

    Recommended reading / viewing / listening

    This week: Charting the road to today’s divided America / Billie Eilish and James Bond / Remembering Flight 93 on 9/11 / Men and beach body tyranny / Women’s experiences in the military

    This week: Charting the road to today’s divided America / Billie Eilish and James Bond / Remembering Flight 93 on 9/11 / Men and beach body tyranny / Women’s experiences in the military

    Most of these great items come from my social media networks. Follow me on Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, LinkedIn, and Facebook for more fascinating videos, photos, articles, essays, and criticism. Learn more about my academic background here.

    1. Women don’t need new year resolutions: we’re pressured to improve ourselves every day
    By Yomi Adegoke | The Guardian | January 2020
    “Don’t worry if you haven’t kept your promises this month: there’s always the rest of the year to feel the expectation to make yourself better”

    2.America’s Great Divide: From Obama to Trump
    Frontline :: PBS | January 2020
    “Part One traces how Barack Obama’s promise of unity collapsed as increasing racial, cultural and political divisions laid the groundwork for the rise of Donald Trump.
    Part Two examines how Trump’s campaign exploited the country’s divisions, how his presidency has unleashed anger on both sides of the divide, and what America’s polarization could mean for the country’s future.”

    3. How AP will call Iowa winner
    By Lauren Easton | The Definitive Source :: Associated Press | January 2020
    “The Associated Press will declare the winner of the Feb. 3 Iowa caucuses based on the number of state delegate equivalents awarded to the candidates.”

    4. Globally, roads are deadlier than HIV or murder
    The Economist | January 2020
    “The tragedy is that this is so easy to change”

    5. Is Billie Eilish too cool for the James Bond franchise?
    By Stuart Heritage | The Guardian | January 2020
    “The 18-year-old will be the youngest singer to do a 007 theme but she might prove too contemporary for one of the dustiest film franchises around”
    Also see: Midas touch: how to create the perfect James Bond song

    6. ‘We May Have to Shoot Down This Aircraft’
    By Garrett M. Graff | Politico Magazine | September 2019
    “What the chaos aboard Flight 93 on 9/11 looked like to the White House, to the fighter pilots prepared to ram the cockpit and to the passengers.”

    7. Beach Body Tyranny Hurts Men Too
    By Katharine A. Phillips | The New York Times | August 2019
    “Women feel tremendous pressure to look good, especially during vacation season. But what about the men and boys who are suffering quietly?”

    8. Albert Einstein – Separating Man from Myth
    By Augusta Dell’Omo | Not Even Past :: UT Austin Department of History | February 2019
    “We go deep into the personal life of Einstein, discussing his damaged relationships, intellectually incoherent views on pacifism and religion, and his own eccentric worldview.”

    9. 40 Stories From Women About Life in the Military
    By Lauren Katzenberg | At War :: The New York Times | March 2019
    “For International Women’s Day, The Times asked servicewomen and veterans to send us the stories that defined their experiences in the military. We left it to them whether to share their accomplishments, the challenges they faced or something unforgettable from their time in the military. Below is a selection of the more than 650 submissions we received.”

    10. Ending in 2020, NASA’s Infrared Spitzer Mission Leaves a Gap in Astronomy
    By Jonathan O’Callaghan | Scientific American | June 2019
    “Delays to the James Webb Space Telescope will result in at least a yearlong hiatus in space-based infrared observations”

    Recommended reading / viewing / listening

    This week: Do you know your ‘type’? / The women who must self-erase / Living apart together: the solution for some couples / The scientist who tried to control hurricanes / The warnings from volcanoes

    This week: Do you know your ‘type’? / The women who must self-erase / Living apart together: the solution for some couples / The scientist who tried to control hurricanes / The warnings from volcanoes

    Most of these great items come from my social media networks. Follow me on Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, LinkedIn, and Facebook for more fascinating videos, photos, articles, essays, and criticism. Learn more about my academic background here.

    1. Forget cat ladies: the eight real tribes of modern dating – from fantasists to routiners
    By Ellie Hunt | The Guardian | January 2020
    “Finding a mate now involves navigating the perils of sword enthusiasts, 9/11 ‘truthers’ and the risk that it’s your beagle they really want, rather than you.”

    2. The Crane Wife
    By C. J. Hauser | The Paris Review | July 2019
    “To keep becoming a woman is so much self-erasing work. She never sleeps. She plucks out all her feathers, one by one.”

    3. Two Houses Is Better Than a Divorce
    By Emily Alford | Jezebel | January 2020
    “There are myriad reasons to sleep apart that don’t involve a fight or indicate a dead bedroom.”

    4. The people trying to save scents from extinction
    By Miguel Trancozo Trevino | BBC Future | January 2020
    “The smells of ordinary life, from traditional pubs to old books, are part of our culture and heritage — and many of them are in danger of being lost.”

    5. ‘I Want Him on Everything’: Meet the Woman Behind the Buttigieg Media Frenzy
    By David Freelander | Politico Magazine | April 2019
    “How hard-charging New York operative Lis Smith helped turn an obscure Indiana mayor into a national name.”

    6. Zen and the art of opening an iPhone box
    By Tom Vanderbilt | 1843 :: The Economist | August / September 2019
    “You do not merely open an iPhone. You are welcomed inside.”

    7. The Chemist Who Thought He Could Harness Hurricanes
    By Sam Kean | The Atlantic | September 2017
    “Irving Langmuir’s ill-fated attempts at seeding storms showed just how difficult it is to control the weather.”

    8. We’re Barely Listening to the U.S.’s Most Dangerous Volcanoes
    By Shannon Hall | The New York Times | September 2019
    “A thicket of red tape and regulations have made it difficult for volcanologists to build monitoring stations along Mount Hood and other active volcanoes. ”

    9. The Radical Vision of Toni Morrison
    By Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah | The New York Times Magazine | April 2015
    “Morrison is a woman of guardrails and many boundaries; she keeps them up in order to do the work.”

    10. The ‘Servant Girl Annihilator’
    By Augusta Dell’Omo | Not Even Past :: UT Austin Department of History | January 2018
    “The serial killer phenomenon was so new that some even went so far as to speculate that Jack the Ripper was the same person.”

    Recommended reading / viewing / listening

    This week: Havana’s neon past / 48 hours that almost destroyed Trump / The myth of nice-guy Gen. Lee / The voice of a Ken Burns documentary film / Women on the edge of the ‘glass cliff’

    This week: Havana’s neon past / 48 hours that almost destroyed Trump / The myth of nice-guy Gen. Lee / The voice of a Ken Burns documentary film / Women on the edge of the ‘glass cliff’

    Most of these great items come from my social media networks. Follow me on Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, LinkedIn, and Facebook for more fascinating videos, photos, articles, essays, and criticism. Learn more about my academic background here.

    1. In Search of the Brain’s Social Road Maps
    By Matthew Schafer and Daniela Schiller | Scientific American | January 2020
    “Neural circuits that track our whereabouts in space and time may also play vital roles in determining how we relate to other people”

    2. Inside the restoration of Havana’s 20th-century neon signs
    The Economist | January 2020
    “After the Cuban revolution, much of the signage was destroyed or fell into disrepair. One artist has made it luminous again.”

    3. Do women feel guilt after having an abortion? No, mainly relief
    By Suzanne Moore | The Guardian | January 2020
    “Most women don’t regret their decision to have a termination — and that outlook could help us protect reproductive rights”

    4. Is this the most powerful word in the English language?
    Helene Schumacher | BBC Culture | January 2020
    “The most commonly-used word in English might only have three letters — but it packs a punch.”

    5. ‘Mother Is Not Going to Like This’: The 48 Hours That Almost Brought Down Trump
    By Tim Alberta | Politico Magazine | July 2019
    “The exclusive story of how Trump survived the Access Hollywood tape.”

    6. The Myth of the Kindly General Lee
    By Adam Serwer | The Atlantic | June 2017
    “The legend of the Confederate leader’s heroism and decency is based in the fiction of a person who never existed.”

    7. The Golden Voice Behind All Those Ken Burns Documentaries
    By Tim Greiving | Vulture | September 2019
    ” His calm, cowboy-around-a-campfire timbre is basically the voice of America, at least within the orbit of PBS.”

    8. The ‘glass cliff’ puts women in power during crisis — often without support
    By Traci Tong | PRI :: The World | March 2019
    “It’s the phenomenon of women in leadership roles — CEOs or political figures — who are far more likely to ascend to leadership roles during a crisis, when the risk of failure is highest.”

    9. What Survival Looks Like After the Oceans Rise
    By Andrea Frazzetta | The New York Times Magazine | April 2019
    “At the site of a Bangladeshi town lost to devastating storms, locals make do by scavenging what remains.”

    10. Slavery and Abolition
    By Brooks Winfree | Not Even Past :: UT Austin Department of History | April 2018
    “Who were abolitionists How did they organize What were their methods And, considering that it took a Civil War to put an end to slavery, did they have any real effect”

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    North River Notes

    Observations on the Hudson River as it passes through New York City. The section of the Hudson which passes through New York is historically known as the North River, called this by the Dutch to distinguish it from the Delaware River, which they knew as the South River. This stretch of the Hudson is still often referred to as the North River by local mariners today. All photos copyright Daniel Katzive unless otherwise attributed. For more frequent updates, please follow northriverblog on Facebook or Instagram.