What Kind of a President Does America Need in 2008?

Abstract

This paper asks, "What kind of a president should Americans elect in 2008?" Claiming that the shortcomings of George W. Bush's administration have a deep basis in a flawed vision, it outlines a worldview that resonates with themes in Reformed theology and that may help to set the tone for a good American presidential administration in our time. The essay also addresses the responsibilities of American voters as they assess candidates for president.     

‘The dearest sacrifice’: Catharine Maria Sedgwick and the Celibate Life

Catharine Maria Sedgwick, America’s most respected and popular female novelist of the early nineteenth century, never married. Yet while she chose a life of celibacy, most scholars have argued that her life represented ‘a deviation’ from the more conventional women’s roles she prescribed in her fiction. This article places Sedgwick’s marital decision within the context of several converging influences – her family history, her Federalist upbringing, and most important, her conversion to Unitarianism. Read through the lens of the complementary religious and social principles of Unitarianism and Federalism, Sedgwick’s novels reveal a persistent exploration of several themes – the ability to realize and advance truth, the centrality of character and moral cultivation, and the obligation to serve one’s community. Sedgwick’s exploration of these themes illuminates her choice of celibacy, and her conclusions contain a radical commentary on the appropriateness of marriage for women.     

De Bow’s Revolution: The Memory of the American Revolution in the Politics of the Sectional Crisis, 1850–1861

In January 1861 editor James D.B. De Bow advocated the secession of southern states from the union as he proclaimed to his readers that white Southerners “are mainly the descendants of those who fought the battles of the Revolution, and who understand and appreciate the nature and inestimable value of the liberty which it brought.” While editors on both sides of the Sectional Crisis over slavery in the 1850s and 60s claimed to be “custodians of the legacy of 1776” as they used the American Revolution symbolically in their rhetoric. By focusing on De Bow’s Review, a widely read and influential journal during this fight, we can gain a better understanding of the specific terms by which Southerners were encouraged to think of themselves not as rebels but as guardians of “the true American character.”     

The Danish St Croix Project: Revisiting the Lincoln Colonization Program with Foreign-language Sources

Working from previously unknown sources in Danish archives, this article establishes for the first time the important role that the island of St Croix played in the Lincoln administration's considerations on colonizing African Americans abroad. This article argues that U.S. Secretary of State William H. Seward, commonly viewed as an anti-colonizationist, was at least a mild proponent of colonization in its earliest stages. The article demonstrates further that in the summer of 1862, the St Croix colonization project was an important stepping stone in the Lincoln administration's legal justification for emancipation, and that it was recognized as such by high-ranking Confederates. The negotiations failed for reasons that had little to do with Lincoln or his opinion on the matter. Rather, the plan fell through because the Danes slowly turned against it for economic and political reasons. The substantial conclusion of this article is that, contrary to earlier perceptions in the historiography, African American colonization during the Civil War was not led and directed entirely from Washington. Rather, in this case, the Danish minister proposed a colonization plan and then worked with the U.S. Government to attempt to see it through.     

The first English map of India

EUROPE

Somerset. By Arthur Mee. Illustrated. Map. Demy 8vo. Pp. ix+483. Price 10s. 6d.

Cambridge. By J. Stegmann. Illustrated. Demy 8vo. Pp. vii+120. Price 10s. 6d.

The Streets of London. By T. Burke. Illustrated. Demy 8vo. Pp. xii+152. Price 10s. 6d.

Curiosities of Town and Countryside. By E. Vale. Illustrated. Demy 8vo. Pp. viii+152. Price 10s. 6d.

The English Countryside. By Various Writers. Illustrated. Crown 8vo. Pp. 250. Price 6s.

Corn Country. By C. H. Warren. Illustrated. Demy 8vo. Pp. viii+136. Price 7s. 6d.

Red Hell. By J. Ameel. Demy 8vo. Pp. 316. London : Robert Hale Ltd., 1941. Price 12s. 6d.

The Way to an Island. By R. M. Rockley. Demy 8vo. Illustrated. Pp. xi+208. London : J. M. Dent and Sons Ltd., 1941. Price 7s. 6d.

If I Laugh. By R. Downing. Demy 8vo. Pp. 224. London : George G. Harrap and Co. Ltd., 1941. Price 8s. 6d.

The Eastern March Lands of Europe. By H. G. Wanklyn. Demy 8vo. Pp. xxiii+356. London : Philip and Son Ltd., 1941. Price 12s 6d.

The Place Names of West Lothian. By Angus Macdonald, M.A., Ph.D. Demy 8vo. Pp. xv+179. Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd Ltd., 1941. Price 15s.

Where the Shannon River Flows. By Richard Hayward. Illustrated. Demy 8vo. Pp. 327. London : George G. Harrap and Co. Ltd., 1940. Price 12s. 6d.

My Alpine Album. By F. Smythe. Illustrated. Imperial 8vo. Pp. 147. London : A. and C. Black Ltd., 1940. Price 12s. 6d.

Living Space. By Stoyan Pribichevich. Demy 8vo. Pp. ix+362. London : William Heinemann Ltd., 1940. Price 15s.

Lundy, Isle of Puffins. By R. Perry. Illustrated. Demy 8vo. Pp. 267. London : Lindsay Drummond, 1940. Price 12s. 6d.

Estonia. By J. H. Jackson. Demy 8vo. Pp. 248. London : George Allen and Unwin Ltd., 1941. Price 12s. 6d.

AFRICA

Africa Pilot. The Hydrographic Department of the Admiralty. The West Coast from Rio del Rey to Cape Hang Klip. The islands off the coast include St. Helena and Ascension. Ninth Edition, 1939.

Pattern in Black and White. By E. Bigland. Demy 8vo. Pp. 160. London : Lindsay Drummond, 1941. Price 6s.

Surveyor's Trek. By D. Anderson. Demy 8vo. Pp. 326. London : Faber and Faber Ltd., 1940. Price 10s. 6d.

Thomas Baines. By J. P. R. Wallis. Illustrated. Demy 8vo. Pp.351. London : Jonathan Cape Ltd., 1941. Price 12s 6d.

Independent Egypt. By Amine Youssef Bey. Demy 8vo. Pp. xxiv+272. London : John Murray, 1941. Price 15s.

AMERICA

The Prodigious Caribbean. By Rosita Forbes. Illustrated. Demy 8vo. Pp.314. London : Cassell and Co. Ltd., 1940. Price 15s.

This Way Southward. By A. F. Tschiffely. Illustrated. Demy 8vo. Pp. xvi+354. London : William Heinemann Ltd., 1940. Price 15s.

Mexico. A New Spain with Old Friends. By J. B. Trend. Illustrated. Demy 8vo. Pp. 185. London : Cambridge University Press Ltd., 1940. Price 12s. 6d.

Voice from the Wilderness. By R. W. Thompson. Demy 8vo. Pp. 360. London : Faber and Faber Ltd., 1940. Price 12s. 6d.

Back of Beyond. By H. Noice. Illustrated. Demy 8vo. Pp. 253, London : George G. Harrap and Co. Ltd., 1940. Price 8s. 6d.

Southward Ho ! By W. La Varre. Illustrated. Demy 8vo. Pp. 258. London : William Heinemann Ltd., 1940. Price 12s. 6d.

ASIA

Oriental Assembly. By T. E. Lawrence. Illustrated. Demy 8vo. Pp. xli+291. London : Williams and Norgate, 1940. Price 10s. 6d.

Siam in Transition. By Kenneth Perry Landon. Demy 8vo. Pp. ix+328. London : Oxford University Press, 1939. Price 10s. 6d.

Syria As It Is. By Helen Cameron Gordon. Illustrated. Demy 8vo. Pp. viii+211. London : Methuen and Co. Ltd., 1939. Price 10s. 6d.

Drinkers of the Wind. By Carl R. Raswan. Illustrated. Pp. 288. Demy 8vo. London : Hutchinson and Co. Ltd., 1940. Price 18s.

Canoe to Mandalay. By R. Raven‐Hart. Illustrated. Demy 8vo. Pp. 245. London : Frederick Muller Ltd., 1939. Price 12s. 6d.

Adventures in Siam in the Seventeenth Century. By E. W. Hutchinson. Map. Demy 8vo. Pp. xxvii+283. London : Royal Asiatic Society, 1940. Price 12s. 6d.

Briton and Turk. By Philip Graves. Demy 8vo. Pp. 260. London : Hutchinson and Co. Ltd., 1941. Price 12s. 6d.

Five Miles High. By the Members of the Karakoram Expedition. Illustrated. Demy 8vo. Pp. 319. London : Robert Hale Ltd., 1940. Price 15s.

Sons of Sindbad. By A. Villiers. Illustrated. Demy 8vo. Pp. xiv+346. London : Hodder and Stoughton Ltd., 1940. Price 20s.

Land of the Blue Poppy. By F. Kingdon Ward. Pp.192. A Penguin Sixpenny Edition of Kingdon Ward's Travels in Eastern Tibet.

AUSTRALASIA

I Went to Tristan. By A. B. Crawford. Illustrated. Maps. Demy 8vo. Pp. 268. London : Hodder and Stoughton Ltd., 1941. Price 18s.

Shackleton's Boat Journey. By Commander F. A. Worsley. Crown 8vo. Pp. 191. London : Hodder and Stoughton Ltd., 1940. Price 2s. 6d.

Peaks, Packs, and Mountain Tracks. By W. S. Gilkinson. Illustrated. Crown 8vo. Pp. 120. London : Whitcombe and Tombs Ltd., 1941. Price 5s.

GENERAL

The Scot Who was a Frenchman. By Marie W. Stuart. Impl. 8vo. Pp. 327. Edinburgh : William Hodge and Co. Ltd., 1940. Price 12s. 6d.

Contemporary Ancestors. By C. Young. Demy 8vo. Pp.190. London: R.T.S., 1941. Price 6s.

The Cambridge History of the British Empire. Vol. II. The Growth of the New Empire, 1783–1870. By various Authors. Impl. 8vo. Pp. xii+1068. London: Cambridge University Press, 1940. Price 50s.

Things Mortal. By Sir Frederick O'Connor. Illustrated. Demy 8vo. Pp. 260. London : Hodder and Stoughton Ltd., 1940. Price 10s 6d.

The Last Secrets. The Final Mysteries of Exploration. By John Buchan. Demy 8vo. Pp. 303. Edinburgh : Thomas Nelson and Sons Ltd., 1941. Price 3s.

Middle East. By H. V. Morton. Demy 8vo. Pp. viii+326. Illustrated. London : Methuen and Co. Ltd., 1941. Price 8s. 6d.

Distant Horizon. By Carl Shreve. Illustrated. Demy 8vo. Pp. 288. London : Herbert Jenkins Ltd., 1940. Price 12s. 6d.

Our British Empire: Its Structure, Its History, and Its Strength. By Stephen Leacock. Crown 8vo. Pp.280. London: John Lane (The Bodley Head) Ltd., 1940. Price 7s. 6d.

EDUCATIONAL

The Lands of Eastern Peoples. By Bradford and Moss. Maps and Illustrations. Demy 8vo. Pp. 145. London : George G. Harrap and Co. Ltd., 1941. Price 2s. 3d.

Man the World Over. By Carter and Brentnaix. Demy 8vo. Pp. 250 approx. Vols 1, 2 and 3. Oxford : Basil Blackwell, 1941. Price 3s. 3d. each.

Nature at Work. By E. M. Stephenson. Demy 8vo. Pp. 96 and 91. Books I and II. London : A. and C. Black Ltd., 1941. Prices 1s. 9d. and 1s. 10d.

MAPS

Bartholomew's Map of Europe Occupied by Germany. Price 3s. 6d.

Philip's The War in Maps. Price 1s. 6d. This is a handy atlas showing the various steps of German expansion from 1870 to the seizures in the present war. It is striking.     

Franklin's Classical American Statesmanship

Abstract

Herbert Storing has persuasively argued that American political thought and statesmanship breaks with the tradition of classical political philosophy and statesmanship, particularly its concern with shaping the character of citizens and leaders, and instead sides with modern political philosophy, which has tended to encourage statesmen to forgo shaping the character of citizens and leaders and to focus instead on shaping institutions that will function regardless of citizens' virtue (or lack of virtue). An exception to this general rule, however, is Benjamin Franklin. Franklin, in the tradition of classical statesmanship, sought to shape not only American political institutions, but also and especially the character and way of life of his fellow citizens. Yet the character and way of life that Franklin helped lead his fellow citizens to embrace is uniquely modern and American in spirit. Thus, Franklin can be said to offer us an example of classical, but uniquely modern and American, statesmanship.     

After the Typhoon: Multicultural Archaeologies of World War II on Peleliu,Palau, Micronesia

Abstract

In the autumn of 1944, one of the worst battles of the Pacific War took place between the Americans and Japanese on the small Micronesian island of Peleliu in the Palau group. Over more than two months of combat, its garrison fought almost literally to the last man, while US casualties were proportionately among the heaviest of the entire war. Afterwards largely overlooked in the public consciousness, the battlefield is now the best preserved of the Pacific theatre and is the subject of an extensive archaeological survey, coupled with a programme of large-scale unexploded ordnance removal. This paper is the second of two, following our previous publication summarizing the more conventional results of the fieldwork. Here, we instead explore the deeper ways in which the material culture of Peleliu can illuminate the multicultural histories of the fighting and thus enable the battlefield to stand as a lasting, reflective memorial to all those whose lives it touched. We address the neglected narratives of the Japanese, the Korean and Okinawan forced labourers, and also the marginalized members of the US forces including African-Americans, Hispanics, and Native Americans. In particular, we attempt to bring out the indigenous perspective on the material heritage of an imported and deeply alien war. In combination, we hope the research can provide new theoretical avenues of exploration for the archaeology of battlefields.     

Count Karl von Zinzendorf 's ‘New Accountancy’: The Structure of Austrian Government Finance in Peace and War, 1781–1791

This article examines various British proposals for co-operation with other European imperial powers to counter the rebellion of the American colonies or curb the pretentions of the new United States. Historians have paid little attention to these projects, mainly because none of them eventuated in the co-operation their authors envisaged. But their lack of success is not a reason to dismiss them as unimportant; their failure reveals much about British attitudes at the time.     

Classical Biography: An Ancient Literary Art

The contradictory and distorted portrayal of certain female attributes in Pablo Neruda's Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada is an attempt to understand and unveil, from an adolescent's point of view, the mystery of the "beloved." The lack of knowledge about the female explains the ambivalence and insecurity in the representation of the woman, which resolves itself through a strategy of metamorphosis and textual dissection. Nevertheless, to discover and possess these female attributes is an illusion, a mirage created by masculine desire that only succeeds in approaching the beloved through a series of metamorphoses and fragmentation that actually obscures her further. But the effort is not in vain. The desire to understand (and love) makes possible the pursuit of the female who always is the same, although somehow different: the unknown stranger.     

Heritage,amenity, and the changing landscape of the rural American West

The production landscapes that once dominated the rural American West are being transformed into amenity landscapes intended largely for consumption by in-migrants and visitors. However, once people settle in the rural West, a newly realized amenity may be recognized: the region's relic cultural landscape. This paper builds upon a 2007 study that used resident-employed photography to assess the varying environmental perspectives of, and social interactions between, newcomers and long-established ranchers in a rural Colorado valley. Photographs taken by both lifelong ranchers and newer nonagricultural residents highlighted two relic landscapes in the valley: its cemetery and one-room schoolhouse. This study investigates these particular cultural landscapes, their histories, meanings, and what their futures in this region may hold, given the in-migration. Using archives, landscape interpretation, and interviews with key informants, this paper analyzes how newcomers may appropriate these relic landscapes and further develop them as cultural amenities in their new environment. Simultaneously, long-established ranchers may defend these landscapes of their own heritage against such co-optation. The interests of newcomers in these historic relics impacts how they are, and will continue to be, managed, possibly creating new opportunities for social interaction among these groups.