Category: WRITING

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”

    Reflecting in 2025 …

    The brilliant, deadly light: A remembrance of 9/11/01

    The brilliant, deadly light: A remembrance of 9/11/01

    There is nothing special about what was expressed below. The words and phrases capture the kind of raw emotions of fear, sadness and confusion that I’m sure many others felt. But they were honest, heartfelt and hopeful … and blissfully ignorant of what was to come over the next two decades.

    A few weeks ago, I thumbed through some of my older files in a search for something completely unrelated to Sept. 11, 2001. I found this collection of musings I wrote about two weeks after the terrorist attacks.

    I was a newspaper editor in Corpus Christi, Texas, at the time, and most of the newspaper’s staff worked for two weeks straight after 9/11, without a break, to make sense of the tragedy for our readers and help them prepare for what would follow. It was some of the best work of my journalism career.

    There is nothing special about what was expressed below. The words and phrases capture the kind of raw emotions of fear, sadness and confusion that I’m sure many others felt. “There is something there in my human heart,” I unabashedly admitted to myself, “something sad, silent, burning and heavy that will always be with me.” The musings may not make complete sense, and they may not be the most eloquent thoughts I ever put down on paper.

    But they were honest, heartfelt and hopeful … and blissfully ignorant of what was to come over the next two decades.

    This was written sometime in late September 2001. I was 27 years old.

    It’s been over two weeks since the terrorist attacks took place, and yet it feels like a year, with barely any memory of the 27 years of my life that preceded Sept. 11’s images of burning skyscrapers, screaming New Yorkers, scorched Pentagon offices, and exhausted newscasters.

    The last several days since have seen my anger misdirected at the ones I love the most, depression, restlessness, sleeplessness, and a plethora of other emotional disruptions. These enduring problems have brought me here, looking for some sort of alleviation or answer through what I know best: the written word.

    I’m linked to the rest of the world through my personal anguish over what took place in New York, Washington, DC, and Pennsylvania. Yet I think I endured the tragedies in a way a comparatively select few in our nation could appreciate. From a distance. From a place of safety. Immersed in my own pain and anguish. Certainly nothing as intense as the men and women who lost loved ones or saw them injured. But there is something there in my human heart — something sad, silent, burning and heavy that will always be with me.

    I’m a news copy editor, one of about a dozen intelligent and well-read professionals who help to produce this newspaper every evening of the year. I edit articles written by our reporters and by reporters from various wire services from across the country. I’m also a page designer, which means I place the articles on the pages, along with most of their accompanying pictures. It’s quite easy, and the richness of the river of information that flows past and through me on an hourly basis successfully seduces me back to my desk every afternoon.

    But the morning of Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001, was a watershed moment for me.

    I joined the newsroom two years ago the way a wanna-be cop hangs out at cop bars — to feel the pulse of the news cycles, to sense waves of energy as a story builds and reporters jump into action, to listen to the everlasting debates between what’s legitimate news and what’s simply tabloid garbage. It’s so much fun. I never considered myself as intelligent as my colleagues but I eventually felt acceptably proficient at what copy editors do, and I suppose I’ve managed to make a decent contribution to the newspaper.

    What I saw take place in this newsroom was an astounding example of what reporters and my fellow copy editors are capable of. It was, as D-Day was once described, the Day of Days. Three incredible newspapers — two extras and a special edition — were produced in one day, something accomplished by only a half-dozen other newspapers in the country. We all worked to cover the story of our lives, trying to explain the terrorist attacks to the public as we privately tried to explain it to ourselves. I was never more proud to count myself among these incredible men and women.

    Most of us worked on the weekends, so my days off were Tuesday and Wednesday. I awoke that morning feeling happy. It had been a boring and quiet work week, and I was ready for two days of relaxation. I reached over to turn on my nightstand alarm clock radio. As always, it was tuned to NPR’s “Morning Edition.” I heard the host, Bob Edwards, announce that a plane had struck one of the towers at the World Trade Center. He said that smoke billowed from the building.

    I remember selfishly thinking, “Well, that’s interesting. Perhaps the wire editor or Page One editor will do something good with this. Thank God I’m off today.”

    But my ever-curious semi-journalist ears were pricked up, so I switched on the TV – permanently set on CNN – to see what I imagined would be a little single-prop plane that perhaps nicked the tip of one of its wings on one of the towers, perhaps being pulled out of the Hudson. But that was not what I saw.

    The moment

    The phone rang minutes later. It was the newspaper’s metro editor. He said an extra edition was going to be published, that everyone was being called in, that this situation was major. I said I would be there as soon as I could.

    “And there it was,” I thought. The moment I waited for yet never hoped for had finally arrived, a day in which the history books would never – could never — overlook. I could sense that strong, huge, great gears were beginning to turn, carrying me back to the heart and mind of this great entity where I held a seat and played a role. This was an emergency, and we were going to be there to meet it head on, turning this massive ship towards the emergency, to begin as carefully yet as quickly as possible to piece together a first draft of history. It sounds so cliché, but it still seems so true.

    This was the essence of what I always thought a newspaper did, and yet even with the entrance into a new century, the impeachment of a president or the closest presidential election in history, it was not enough of a challenge to our capacity to marshal our creative and intellectual forces. History had thrown a huge puzzle up into the air, and it was up to me and to us to piece enough of it together to make sense of it to ourselves before making sense of it to our readers.

    But the true significance of the emergency did not dawn on me until I arrived at the Caller-Times. The second plane had struck the second tower, the Pentagon was hit, and one of the towers had collapsed. The second one collapsed soon afterwards. I never saw so many of my co-workers at the same time before, everyone tense and talkative, busily preparing for something, printing out the first pictures from the Associated Press and tapping away at keyboards.

    The editors and designers from the Features department — they worked regular 9-to-5 hours — had been moved over from their offices down the hall and into the newsroom to start collecting photos and the initial stories coming off the news wires. They sat at my desk and at my colleagues’ desks. So most everyone who arrived after me was displaced. They moved over to share desks with the sports editors and designers, who occupied the dozen or so cubicles next to ours. It seemed more people were standing than sitting.

    As I walked through the melee, the editor of the newspaper’s Sunday edition — the senior editor/designer among us — calmly smiled at me. He looked relieved to see me. His hair was still wet from a shower that must have come as unexpectedly early as mine had. We were among the first of our news editing team to arrive. CNN was blaring from every television in the newsroom. Phones everywhere rang and rang.

    The work

    The executive editor — the newspaper’s supreme commander — gathered the reporters, editors, page designers and photographers for a quick briefing. Everyone looked nervous. Some took notes as she spoke. Others just stared at her or down at the ground. One seemed to have tears welling in her eyes. Another looked like he had been crying for a while. I was numb, not from fright or nervousness. I felt like I was bracing for some kind of impact, but now I think it was simply that I grimly anticipated that there were some long days and nights ahead. I don’t mean workload – I mean enduring a tremendous amount of work combined with the normal grieving process that I knew I would not allow myself to experience until the work was done … a process I’m experiencing now, with these words and thoughts.

    The plan was ambitious. The editor wanted two extra editions printed before we began preparing the regular newspaper for Wed., Sept. 12. The first extra would be done by 2 p.m., the second only a few hours later, and then the real workday would begin. The newsroom jumped into action, meetings were held, the dummies for pages were distributed to designers, photos were selected, and the budgets (the master list of wire service and local stories we might use, along with their designated pages) were printed.

    I had a simple peripheral role — as did many others — of designing a few inside pages. A few people worked on finding the right pictures and keeping track of who was using them. The executive editor and the Sunday editor who was relieved to see me worked together on what would appear on the front pages.

    Information on the attacks continued to pour in, some of it reliable, some of it not. Most of the televisions were muted so their sound was no longer a distraction. The roaring hurricanes of fragmentary information, images, speculations, and so much more swirled through my mind. A rudimentary “news crawl” moved along the bottom of CNN’s screen, with some headlines predicting 10,000 fatalities, rumors of a bomb at the State Department, possible attacks in other cities. CNN showed the planes slamming into the towers over and over again. The deathly bright orange of the explosions, the people leaping from the upper floors, the horrifying straightforwardness of two of the world’s tallest buildings collapsing into ash, fire and smoke as a global audience watched … they played it over and over and over again.

    There was no real time to mourn or try to really comprehend what was happening to New York City or Washington D.C. There was no real opportunity to sit back and contemplate what this would mean for the weakened economy or the missile defense initiative or even the social consciousness of my generation. Perhaps the only real concern in the back of my mind, aside from trying to finish those pages, was: Is this just the beginning? Are there more attacks coming? Immersed as I was in such an avalanche of information, both reliable and not, I suppose any emotional reaction — fear, sadness, anger — was not really allowed to surface, even as they boiled beneath the veneer of steady professionalism.

    A brilliant, deadly light

    As I write this, I think of my colleagues. They’re all tired now, most of them surely much more exhausted than me. Many seemed so burned out by the never-ending coverage, even though some semblance of normality seems to be returning. It’s like we were plunged into a dark tunnel since the attacks took place, piecing together the world around us with penlights.

    Does anyone remember Connie Chung’s Gary Condit interview, HBO’s “Band of Brothers” series, or Madonna’s Drowned World tour? Does anyone care anymore? It’s our job to keep our little city informed of the world’s events. There was time when it was easy, when we had the luxury to debate the importance given to Andrea Yates or a spy plane lost in Chinese territory.

    Naturally, I have as many questions as anyone else: Were the attacks part of a greater plan? Is Osama bin Laden truly the man behind the terrorism this time? Will Bush’s “war” take years to accomplish objectives that are not yet announced?

    Ironically, with the resources and information provided by countless newspapers and news services at my fingertips, I have no better perspective than someone working on depositions at the courthouse, someone selling clothes at the mall, or someone begging for change on the seawall. The stories all ask the same questions, all chase the same sources, all come up with the same hollow predictions from unnamed sources.

    When will we have all the answers? Are we on the verge of a third world war? How will this new fight change the United States? How will this new era change my generation as we grow into journalism’s leaders? How will this change me? Will we ever emerge from this dark tunnel? What awaits us in that brilliant, deadly light?

    Two decades later, I wrote a shorter version of this remembrance as my contribution to Texas Public Radio’s collection of memories marking Sept. 11, 2021. You may read it here.

    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: How to avoid loneliness / Joe Biden in the Trump Era / 60,000 Mexicans ‘disappeared’ / The nuns who sold slaves / Racist tipping

    This week: How to avoid loneliness / Joe Biden in the Trump Era / 60,000 Mexicans ‘disappeared’ / The nuns who sold slaves / Racist tipping

    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. García Márquez’s Five Favorite Cocktail Stories
    By Santiago Mutis Duran, and translated by David Unger | The Paris Review | August 2019
    “Santiago Mutis Durán, the son of Márquez’s close friend Álvaro Mutis, gathered together small author-less stories that Márquez had written down or told over the course of his lifetime.”

    2. How to avoid the traps that produce loneliness and isolation
    By Arthur C. Brooks | The Washington Post | January 2020
    “But the real question is why so many people feel isolated, when contact with others should be easier than ever. If we can answer that, we can craft a solution — if not societally, at least personally, to make our lives happier and better.”

    3. A Man In Full
    By Walter Shapiro | The New Republic | January 2020
    “Joe Biden wants to be a normal president in a highly abnormal age.”

    4. More than 60,000 Mexicans have been ‘disappeared’ amid drug war, officials say
    By Mary Beth Sheridan | The Washington Post | January 2020
    “Karla Quintana, head of Mexico’s National Search Commission, which coordinates the effort to find the missing, said at least 61,637 people had been reported disappeared and not been found — what she called ‘data of horror.’ The actual number is thought to be even higher, since many cases are never reported. The numbers confirm that Mexico is suffering one of the worst crises of ‘the disappeared’ in Latin American history.”

    5. The Racist History of Tipping
    By William J. Barber II | Politico Magazine | July 2019
    “Tipping originated in feudal Europe and was imported back to the United States by American travelers eager to seem sophisticated. The practice spread throughout the country after the Civil War as U.S. employers, largely in the hospitality sector, looked for ways to avoid paying formerly enslaved workers.”

    6. The Nuns Who Bought and Sold Human Beings
    By Rachel L. Swarns | The New York Times | August 2019
    “America’s nuns are beginning to confront their ties to slavery, but it’s still a long road to repentance.”

    7. The Great Boundary-Breaking Women of Fiction
    By Louisa Treger | CrimeReads :: LitHub | August 2019
    “Celebrating 10 strong women who refused to conform and who struggled to find their place in the world.”

    8. One Year in Washington
    By David Freelander | The Cut :: New York Magazine | January 2020
    “Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez reshaped her party’s agenda, resuscitated Bernie Sanders’s campaign, and hardly has a friend in town.”

    9. Violent Policing of the Texas Border
    By Augusta Dell’Omo | Not Even Past :: UT Austin Department of History | January 2019
    “Between 1910 and 1920, an era of state-sanctioned racial violence descended upon the U.S.-Mexico border. Texas Rangers, local ranchers, and U.S. soldiers terrorized ethnic Mexican communities, under the guise of community policing.”

    10. Is your to-do list making you nuts? Start a to-don’t list instead
    By Anna Phelan | Ideas :: TED.com | March 2019
    “The TED speaker and podcast host shares 4 items from his to-don’t list — stuff he’s shed from his life to make him a happier and more effective human. Read it and learn.”

    Recommended reading / viewing / listening

    This week: The secrets of Afghanistan / The female gaze on film / 2019’s best books / Loving and hating the New York subway / Boris Johnson and the future

    This week: The secrets of Afghanistan / The female gaze on film / 2019’s best books / Loving and hating the New York subway / Boris Johnson and the future

    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. The Afghanistan Papers: A secret history of the war
    By Craig Whitlock, Leslie Shapiro and Armand Emamdjomeh | The Washington Post | December 2019
    “In a cache of previously unpublished interviews and memos, key insiders reveal what went wrong during the longest armed conflict in U.S. history.”

    2. ‘Hustler’s’ Greatest Trick Is Its Take on the Female Gaze
    By Alison Willmore | Vulture :: New York Magazine | October 2019
    “The intention is not to evoke the lust of the money-hurling mass of customers but to show us Ramona the way Destiny sees her, as this powerful, enviable whole.”

    3. How photos taken from the sky are helping farmers
    By Andie Corban and Kai Ryssdal | Marketplace | October 2019
    “Technology is changing the way most of us work these days, and farming is no exception. There are several new ag-tech companies dedicated solely to making agriculture more efficient.”

    4. Our 50 Favorite Books of the Year
    LitHub | December 2019
    “Highlights From a Year in Reading by the Literary Hub Staff”

    5. I Still Kind of Love the New York Subway
    By Maeve Higgins | The New York Times | December 2019
    “Sometimes I wonder if I can stand many more years of unreliable service. Then something happens that gets me all mushy again.”

    6. Could Boris Johnson Be the Last Prime Minister of the U.K. As We Know It?
    By Jonah Shepp | Intelligencer :: New York Magazine | December 2019
    “British — or rather, English — politicians a generation from now could find themselves in a downsized House of Commons, debating whether breaking up with the European Union was worth breaking up their own union as well.”

    7. The worst takes of the 2010s
    The Outline | December 2019
    “The past decade had a lot of pieces that should have been left unpublished.”

    8. How Fiction Can Defeat Fake News
    By Amitava Kumar | Columbia Journalism Review | Fall 2019
    “There is fiction and then there is fiction — falsities that lead to lynchings and riots. Both rely on storytelling, but that’s like saying soil is used both in gardens and in graves. The way language is used in each case is entirely different, if not opposed.”

    9. A Tiny Leak Led to a Massive, Unexpected Collapse at Kilauea Volcano
    By Stephanie Pappas | Scientific American | December 2019
    “Its caldera’s dramatic, surprisingly slow collapse could point to other risks worldwide.”

    10. The War That Continues to Shape Russia, 25 Years Later
    By Andrew Higgins | The New York Times | December 2019
    “Haunting images show how the first Chechen war humiliated post-Soviet Russia, exposed its weakness, strengthened hard-liners and enabled the rise of Vladimir V. Putin.”

    My Old-Fashioned Summer

    Several friends this summer fell in love with my Old-Fashioned cocktails.

    Several friends this summer fell in love with my Old-Fashioned cocktails. One friend said he always loved the simplicity of my preparation. I said I never did anything fancy. It was always simply about the drink and about the ceremony of sharing that first sip with someone special.

    Salud …

     


    1. I begin with a beautiful glass …

     



    2. I drop in a Demerara sugar cube …

     



    3. I douse it with aromatic bitters. Three or four dashes. I give the cube a moment to soak it up. ​…

     



    4. I use a muddler to crush the soaked cube and mix it with the bitters. Essentially, I’m trying to make a paste or syrup base.​ …

     



    5. I drop in a single large ice cube or sphere.​ …

     



    6. I slowly pour in three fluid ounces of bourbon, usually Bullitt.​ …

     



    7. I gently stir it 20 times, keeping the back of the spoon lightly pressed against the inside of the glass as I stir.​ …

     



    8. I cut off an orange rind, and with the white part facing up, I hold it over the drink and quickly fold it lengthwise. The oils spray into the bourbon. I then rub the rind along the edge of the glass and the inside of the glass. I then drop it into the drink.​ …

     



    9. I drop in two Luxardo cherries and two spoonfuls of the dark syrup.​ …

     



    10. I light a cigar, watch the sunset and take a moment to appreciate the small luxuries and pleasures of life.​

    Behind The Wall

    Tabletop Games

    Rebecca Aguilar

    #CallingAllJournalists Initiative | Reporter | Media Watchdog | Mentor | Latinas in Journalism

    Anna Fonte's Paper Planes

    Words, images & collages tossed from a window.

    Postcards from Barton Springs

    Gayle Brennan Spencer - sending random thoughts to and from South Austin

    The Flask Half Full

    Irreverent travelogues, good drinks, and the cultural stories they tell.

    Government Book Talk

    Talking about some of the best publications from the Federal Government, past and present.

    Fighting Irish Wire

    Cadillac Society

    Cadillac News, Forums, Rumors, Reviews

    Ob360media

    Real News That Matters

    Talking Pictures Audio Description

    Pintar Discover

    Space Navy

    Mealtime Joy

    bringing joy to family meals

    Øl, Mad og Folk

    Bloggen Øl, Mad og Folk

    a joyous kitchen

    fun, delicious food for everyone

    A Perfect Feast

    Modern Comfort Food

    donnablackwrites

    Art is a gift we give ourselves

    Fridgelore

    low waste living drawn from food lore through the ages

    BeckiesKitchen.com

    MUSINGS : CRITICISM : HISTORY : NEWS

    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.