Disasters, accidents, and crises have profoundly shaped American history--from the "starving time" at Jamestown, the smallpox epidemic during the Revolutionary War, and the "year without a summer" in 1816 to the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, the San Francisco earthquake, and the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Not only have these catastrophic events upended lives and wreaked untold havoc, they have often transformed society, demarcating one era from another and generating vast social change. Broadly defined to encompass a huge array of events that have shocked the country,...
Disasters, accidents, and crises have profoundly shaped American history--from the "starving time" at Jamestown, the smallpox epidemic during the Revo...
The rise of an immensely powerful federal government in the twentieth century has tended to obscure the importance of state and local government in American history. Yet government at these lesser levels had the most direct and continuous effect on the lives of ordinary citizens. Through an analysis of late-nineteenth-century state legislatures in Illinois, Iowa, and Wisconsin, Ballard Campbell has written what one expert has called "the best book on legislative politics, past or present." The period he examines was one of rapid change and great challenge. Urbanization, industrialization,...
The rise of an immensely powerful federal government in the twentieth century has tended to obscure the importance of state and local government i...
