By Armstead L. Robinson (NHC Fellow, 1984–85) Bitter Fruits of Bondage is the late Armstead L. Robinson’s magnum opus, a controversial history that explodes orthodoxies on both sides of the historical debate over why the South lost the Civil War. Recent studies, while conceding the importance of social factors in the unraveling of the Confederacy, … Continued
By Patricia Meyer Spacks (Trustee; NHC Fellow, 1982–83; 1988–89) This book offers a witty explanation of why boredom both haunts and motivates the literary imagination. Moving from Samuel Johnson to Donald Barthelme, from Jane Austen to Anita Brookner, Spacks shows us at last how we arrived in a postmodern world where boredom is the all-encompassing … Continued
By Gerard Passannante (NHC Fellow, 2010–11) When we catastrophize, we think the worst. We make too much of too little, or something of nothing. Yet what looks simply like a bad habit, Gerard Passannante argues, was also a spur to some of the daring conceptual innovations and feats of imagination that defined the intellectual and cultural history … Continued
By Thomas J. Brown (NHC Fellow, 2015–16) This sweeping new assessment of Civil War monuments unveiled in the United States between the 1860s and 1930s argues that they were pivotal to a national embrace of military values. Americans' wariness of standing armies limited construction of war memorials in the early republic, Thomas J. Brown explains, … Continued
Edited by Charles Townshend (NHC Fellow, 1987–88) These essays by leading scholars of Northern Irish politics and Anglo-Irish relations explore the possibility of and prospects for political consensus in Ireland. The contributions embrace a number of approaches—historical, legal, sociological, and political—and examine the context and consequences of particular political initiatives and constitutional changes over the … Continued
By Jaroslav Folda (NHC Fellow, 1988–89; 1998–99; 2006–07) This book tells the story of the Architecture and the Figural Art produced for the Crusaders after the battle of Hattin and the fall of Jerusalem in 1187, during the one hundred years that Acre was the capital of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, 1191–1291. It is … Continued
By Richard A. Soloway (NHC Fellow, 1986–87) Richard Soloway offers a compelling and authoritative study of the relationship of the eugenics movement to the dramatic decline in the birthrate and family size in twentieth-century Britain. Working in a tradition of hereditarian determinism which held fast to the premise that "like tends to beget like," eugenicists … Continued
By J. R. S. Phillips (NHC Fellow, 1987–88) Edward II (1284–1327), King of England, Lord of Ireland, and Duke of Aquitaine, was the object of ignominy during his lifetime and calumny since it. Conventionally viewed as worthless, incapable of sustained policy, and significant only for his sporadic displays of ill-directed energy or a stubborn adherence … Continued
By David B. Quinn (NHC Fellow, 1982–83) and A. N. Ryan
Edited by Jack P. Greene (NHC Fellow, 1986–87; 1987–88; 2009–10) Consisting of an introduction and ten chapters, Exclusionary Empire examines the transfer of English traditions of liberty and the rule of law overseas from 1600 to 1900. Each chapter is written by a noted specialist and focuses on a particular area of the settler empire … Continued