The Himalaya inspire the notion of Shangri-la and are world renowned for their exquisite mountain scenery and the ancient cultures that tenaciously inhabit this harsh and sublime landscape. Home to all fourteen of the world's highest peaks, including Mount Everest, and some of its deepest gorges, the region is a trove of biological and cultural diversity. A sweeping overview of the geography, economics, politics, and culture of this spectacular region, the Illustrated Atlas of the Himalaya is the first full-color, comprehensive atlas of contemporary land and life in the Earth's highest mountains. Drawing from the authors' twenty-five years of scholarship and personal experience in the region, the volume contains a stunning and unique collection of informative maps based on state-of-the-art cartography, exquisite photography, and compelling text to give accurate coverage of the Himalaya. The entire 2,700-kilometer length of the range is covered, from the Indus Valley in northern Pakistan and India, across Nepal and Bhutan, to the hidden realms of northeast India. With over 300 artfully produced four-color maps and photographs, the Illustrated Atlas of the Himalaya is an indispensable reference and a superb collector's volume for anyone interested in the vast mountain panorama that is the Himalaya.

When Thomas D. Clark was hired to teach history at the University of Kentucky in 1931, he began a career that would span nearly three-quarters of a century and would profoundly change not only the history department and the university but the entire Commonwealth. His still-definitive History of Kentucky (1937) was one of more than thirty books he would write or edit dealing with Kentucky, the South, and the American frontier. In addition to his wide scholarly contributions, Clark devoted his life to the preservation of Kentucky's historical records. His efforts resulted in the Commonwealth's first archival system and the subsequent creation of the Kentucky Library and Archives, the University of Kentucky Special Collections and Archives, the Kentucky Oral History Commission, the Kentucky History Center (recently named for him), and the University Press of Kentucky. Born on a cotton farm in Louisville, Mississippi, in 1903, Thomas Dionysius Clark dropped out of school after seventh grade to work on a canal dredgeboat before resuming his formal education. In My Century in History, Clark offers vivid memories of his personal and academic journey, a journey that took him from Mississippi to Kentucky and North Carolina, to leadership of the nation's major historical organizations, and to visiting professorships in Austria, England, Greece, and India, as well as in universities throughout the United States. An enormously popular public lecturer as well, he touched thousands of lives. With characteristic wit and insight, Clark now offers his many admirers one final volume of history -- his own.

When war broke out in Europe in 1914, political leaders in the United States were swayed by popular opinion to remain neutral; yet less than three years later, the nation declared war on Germany. In Nothing Less Than War: A New History of America's Entry into World War I, Justus D. Doenecke examines the clash of opinions over the war during this transformative period and offers a fresh perspective on America's decision to enter World War I. Doenecke reappraises the public and private diplomacy of President Woodrow Wilson and his closest advisors and explores in great depth the response of Congress to the war. He also investigates the debates that raged in the popular media and among citizen groups that sprang up across the country as the U.S. economy was threatened by European blockades and as Americans died on ships sunk by German U-boats.The decision to engage in battle ultimately belonged to Wilson, but as Doenecke demonstrates, Wilson's choice was not made in isolation. Nothing Less Than War provides a comprehensive examination of America's internal political climate and its changing international role during the seminal period of 1914--1917.

What do we learn from eating? About ourselves? Others? In this unique memoir, Doris Friedensohn takes eating as an occasion for inquiry. Munching on quesadillas and kimchi in her suburban New Jersey neighborhood, she reflects on the meanings of cultural inclusion and what it means to our diverse nation. Enjoying couscous in Tunisia and khatchapuri (cheese bread) in the Republic of Georgia, she explores the ways strangers maintain their differences and come together. Friedensohn's subjects range from Thanksgiving at a Middle Eastern restaurant to fried grasshoppers in Oaxaca. Her wry dramas of the dining room, restaurant, market, and kitchen ripple with geopolitical, economic, psychological, and spiritual tensions. Eating as I Go is Friedensohn's distinctive combination of memoir, traveler's tale, and cultural commentary.

The U.S. Cavalry, which began in the nineteenth century as little more than a mounted reconnaissance and harrying force, underwent intense growing pains with the rapid technological developments of the twentieth century. From its tentative beginnings during World War I, the eventual conversion of the traditional horse cavalry to a mechanized branch is arguably one of the greatest military transformations in history. Through Mobility We Conquer recounts the evolution and development of the U.

In Profiles from the Kitchen, Charles A. Baker-Clark offers a collection of portraits of well-known culinary figures who have worked in different ways to shape our relationship with food. Despite their diverse personalities, backgrounds, and interests, Baker-Clark's subjects are a testament to the fact that both cooking and eating are endeavors well worth learning and sustaining. Profiles from the Kitchen includes well-known food writers such as M.F.K. Fisher, Eugene Walter, Elizabeth David, and John T. Edge; famous cooks such as Julia Child and James Beard; and contemporary chefs such as Rick Bayless and Susan Spicer. Each individual has offered different views of food and cooking and has encouraged us to appreciate good cooking while considering other facets of our food, including how food relates to issues of social justice, spirituality, and sustainability.

A frank and refreshing evaluation of several Chief Executives, their Directors of Central Intelligence, and even some lower in the hierarchy, Executive Secrets shines light on the development and execution of foreign policy through the understanding of the tools available, of which covert action may be least known and understood. This book is a great tool for the press, the public, and many political appointees in the National Security System. A History Book Club Selection with a foreword by Mark Bowden, author of Black Hawk Down.

Across more than six generations -- beginning before the Revolutionary War -- the Breckinridge family has produced a series of notable leaders. These often controversial men and women included a presidential candidate, a U.S. vice president, cabinet members, generals, women's rights advocates, congressmen, editors, reformers, authors, and church leaders. Along with success, the Breckinridges, like other Americans, faced hardship and war, contended with race, lived through difficult family situations -- including a sex scandal -- and encountered personal and political failure. An articulate, opinionated, and frank family, the Breckinridges have left a detailed record that allows us a vivid recreation of the range of American history and society.

Scholars, journalists, writers, and pundits have long regarded the South as the nation's most politically distinctive region. Its culture, history, and social and economic institutions have fostered unique political ideas that intrigue observers and have had profound political consequences for the nation's citizens, politicians, and policymakers. Writing Southern Politics is the most comprehensive review of the large body of post--World War II literature on southern politics. Since the publication of V.O. Key Jr.'s landmark work, Southern Politics in State and Nation (1949), scholars have produced an astounding number of books, monographs, professional journal articles, and research papers addressing elements of continuity and change in southern politics. The contributors to this book sort through the literature, identifying major themes, examining areas of scholarly disagreement, and making the key dimensions and contours of the region's politics understandable. Individually, the essays in this volume identify and clarify the key writing and research in selected subfields of southern politics, including religion, race, women, and political parties. Collectively, the essays identify and discuss the major components of and trends in southern politics over the past half century.The contributors, some of the foremost scholars in the field, have been heavily involved in researching and writing about southern politics during the past three decades and have observed the development of many of the research projects that form the foundation of southern political literature. In many instances, their own writings are included in the body of literature they discuss, bringing unique skills, research, and perspectives to their original essays. In addition to reviewing existing literature, Writing Southern Politics also includes suggestions for a future research agenda.Not all aspects of the region's dramatic fifty-year transformation have been fully explored, and the continuation of this development ensures new avenues to examine. The discussion of past research and writing is an invaluable tool for understanding the trends in southern politics over the past half century. By examining these trends and developing an agenda for future research, the authors provide a roadmap for identifying the changes that will likely shape the region over the next half century.

A comprehensive history of the African American fight for racial equality from the standpoint of the civil rights movement in South Carolina, Democracy Rising examines the struggle from the end of the Civil War through the modern civil rights movement of the 1960s. In an effort to broaden our understanding of civil rights and democracy in America, Peter F. Lau describes how conflicts born of the state's history of racial exclusion and discrimination continue to shape the social problems and promises of our time. At the center of the book is the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Lau focuses on the interplay between the national organization and its local affiliates, demonstrating the impact each had on the other in shaping the outcome of grassroots social and political change.

With Amusement for All is a sweeping interpretative history of American popular culture. Providing deep insights into various individuals, events, and movements, LeRoy Ashby explores the development and influence of popular culture -- from minstrel shows to hip-hop, from the penny press to pulp magazines, from the NBA to NASCAR, and much in between. By placing the evolution of popular amusement in historical context, Ashby illuminates the complex ways in which popular culture both reflects and transforms American society. He demonstrates a recurring pattern in democratic culture by showing how groups and individuals on the cultural and social periphery have profoundly altered the nature of mainstream entertainment. The mainstream has repeatedly co-opted and sanitized marginal trends in a process that continues to shift the limits of acceptability. Ashby describes how social control and notions of public morality often vie with the bold, erotic, and sensational as entrepreneurs finesse the vagaries of the market and shape public appetites. Ashby argues that popular culture is indeed a democratic art, as it entertains the masses, provides opportunities for powerless and disadvantaged individuals to succeed, and responds to changing public hopes, fears, and desires. However, it has also served to reinforce prejudices, leading to discrimination and violence. Accordingly, the study of popular culture reveals the often dubious contours of the American dream. With Amusement for All never loses sight of pop culture's primary goal: the buying and selling of fun. Ironically, although popular culture has drawn an enormous variety of amusements from grassroots origins, the biggest winners are most often sprawling corporations with little connection to a movement's original innovators.

For centuries, eyewitnesses around the world -- from America to Africa, Argentina to Scotland -- have reported sightings of dark, mysterious creatures in area lakes that surface briefly, only to quickly disappear. While the most famous lake monsters, those living in Loch Ness and Lake Champlain, have gained international notoriety, hundreds of lakes around the world are said to shelter these shadowy creatures. Lake Monster Mysteries is the first book to collectively approach these widespread mysteries from a scientific perspective. By using exhaustive research and results from firsthand investigations to help separate truth from myth, the authors foster our understanding of what really lurks in the cold, murky depths. Benjamin Radford and Joe Nickell are considered to be among the top lake monster authorities in the world. Here they share unique insights into many of the world's best-known lake monsters. They interview dozens of people and discuss the different types of lake monster sightings, delve into possible explanations for those sightings, and examine hoaxes, evidence claims, and legends surrounding the monsters. The authors have conducted groundbreaking fieldwork and experiments at lakes, examined photographic evidence, and analyzed the most current sonar readings. Incorporating newly-revealed information and up-to-date developments, the cases in Lake Monster Mysteries are in-depth, firsthand investigations that will inform and entertain both avid lake monster researchers and lovers of unexplained mysteries.

Written by Kentuckians for Kentuckians, Faces of Kentucky is a comprehensive history of Kentucky designed for young students. The state's story comes alive as never before through the images and life stories of the diverse people of the Commonwealth. The product of a collaboration of the state historian of Kentucky and an award-winning teacher (both native Kentuckians), Faces of Kentucky approaches learning as a voyage of discovery. Numerous illustrations, thought-provoking questions, and historical mysteries to be solved seek to challenge young readers and to help them think about their state, themselves, and their future.Features: Timelines from early history to present Discussion questions; Over 250 photographs; 25 Maps; Primary Documents; Teacher's Guide with companion CD for use in the elementary school classroom.

The Teacher's Guide is an essential companion to our 4th grade Kentucky history textbook, Faces of Kentucky. It is free with classroom adoption. Freda C. Klotter is an educational consultant who has over 25 years of classroom teaching experience. James C. Klotter, the state historian of Kentucky and professor of history at Georgetown College, is the author, coauthor, or editor of many books, including Faces of Kentucky.

"Queen Bee," "busy as a bee," and "the land of milk and honey" are expressions that permeate the language within American culture. Music, movies, art, advertising, poetry, children's books, and literature all incorporate the dynamic image of the tiny, industrious honey bee into our popular imagination. Honey bees -- and the values associated with them -- have influenced American values for four centuries. Bees and beekeepers have represented order and stability in a country without a national religion, political party, language, or family structure. Bees in America is an enlightening cultural history of bees and beekeeping in the United States. Tammy Horn, herself a beekeeper, offers a social and technological history from the colonial period, when the British first brought bees to the New World, to the present, when bees are being trained by the American military to detect bombs. Horn shows how the honey bee was one of the first symbols of colonization and how bees' societal structures shaped our ideals about work, family, community, and leisure. In turn, the Puritan work ethic was modeled after the beehive, and this model continues to influence American definitions of success. Still a powerful symbol today, the honey bee is both a source of income and a metaphor for America's place at the center of global advances in information and technology.

On November 8, 1943, U.S. Army nurse Agnes Jensen stepped out of a cold rain in Catania, Sicily, into a C-53 transport plane. But she and twelve other nurses never arrived in Bari, Italy, where they were to transport wounded soldiers to hospitals farther from the front lines. A violent storm and pursuit by German Messerschmitts led to a crash landing in a remote part of Albania, leaving the nurses, their team of medics, and the flight crew stranded in Nazi-occupied territory. What followed was a dangerous nine-week game of hide-and-seek with the enemy, a situation President Roosevelt monitored daily. Albanian partisans aided the stranded Americans in the search for a British Intelligence Mission, and the group began a long and hazardous journey to the Adriatic coast. During the following weeks, they crossed Albania's second highest mountain in a blizzard, were strafed by German planes, managed to flee a town moments before it was bombed, and watched helplessly as an attempt to airlift them out was foiled by Nazi forces. Albanian Escape is the suspense-filled story of the only group of Army flight nurses to have spent any length of time in occupied territory during World War II. The nurses and flight crew endured frigid weather, survived on little food, and literally wore out their shoes trekking across the rugged countryside. Thrust into a perilous situation and determined to survive, these women found courage and strength in each other and in the kindness of Albanians and guerrillas who hid them from the Germans.