In 1988, director Martin Scorsese fulfilled his lifelong dream of making a film about Jesus Christ. Rather than celebrating the film as a statement of faith, churches and religious leaders immediatel
“The history books may write it Rev. King was born in Atlanta, and then came to Montgomery, but we feel that he was born in Montgomery in the struggle here, and now he is moving to Atlanta for
Preeminent Kentucky reformer and women’s rights advocate Madeline McDowell Breckinridge (1872–1920) was at the forefront of social change during the late nineteenth and early twentieth ce
The role of law in government has been increasingly scrutinized as courts struggle with controversial topics such as assisted suicide, euthanasia, abortion, capital punishment, and torture. Reflection
Will the rare autographed baseball your great-uncle gave you put your children through college? Is your grandmother’s chest of drawers really a seventeenth-century antique, or merely a reproduc
Hal Ashby (1929–1988) was always an outsider, and as a director he brought an outsider’s perspective to Hollywood cinema. After moving to California from a Mormon household in Utah, he cr
A former Sunday school teacher and Hollywood actor, Ronald Reagan was an unlikely candidate for president. His charisma, conviction, and leadership earned him the governorship of California, from whi
One of the lesser known stories of the Civil War is the role played by escaped slaves in the Union blockade along the Atlantic coast. From the beginning of the war, many African American refuge
During World War II, Hollywood studios supported the war effort by making patriotic movies designed to raise the nation’s morale. They often portrayed the combatants in very simple terms: Ameri
In light of recent controversies and legal actions related to America's treatment of enemy prisoners in the Middle East and Guantanamo Bay, the regulation of government during wartime has become a vol
One of the most accomplished writers and directors of classic Hollywood, Billy Wilder (1906--2002) directed numerous acclaimed films, including Sunset Boulevard (1950), Sabrina (1954), The Seven Year
In addition to war, terrorism, and unchecked military violence, modernity is also subject to less visible but no less venomous conflicts. Global in nature, these "culture wars" exacerbate the tensions
Originally inhabited by Native American tribes, territorial Mississippi has a complex history rife with fierce contention. Since 1540, when Hernando de Soto of Spain journeyed across the Atlantic and
Revelations of abuse at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison and the U.S. detention camp at Guantanamo Bay had repercussions extending beyond the worldwide media scandal that ensued. The controversy surroundin
"Xiaobing Li successfully finds a fresh and intriguing niche for his collection of twentytwo individual Vietnam War stories. This should make a first-rate supplementary text."---Robert J. McMahon, aut
Between 1802, when the young Kentucky artist William Edward West began to paint portraits while on a downriver journey, and 1920, when the last of Frank Duveneck's students worked in Louisville, a lar
Law and Society in the South reconstructs eight pivotal legal disputes heard in North Carolina courts between the 1830s and the 1970s and examines some of the most controversial issues of southern his
" A special leatherbound, signed and numbered edition! Bela Lugosi won immediate fame for his portrayal of the immortal count in the 1931 film Dracula. After a decade of trying vainly to broaden his r
The Sopranos is recognized as the most successful cable series in the history of television. The Washington Post has called the popular series, winner of twenty-one Emmys and five Golden Globes, "the
When Ahmed Kathrada was released from prison in 1989 together with Walter Sisulu and Raymond Mhlaba after serving twenty-six years of a life sentence, more than 5,000 people came to Soweto to give him
