Resisting Oklahoma's Reign of Terror


Book Description

The oil and natural gas boom in pre–World War I Oklahoma brought unbelievable wealth to thousands of tribal citizens in the state on whose lands these minerals were discovered. However, as Angie Debo recognizes in her seminal study of the period, And Still the Waters Run, and, more recently, as David Grann does in Killers of the Flower Moon, this affluence placed Natives in the crosshairs of unscrupulous individuals. As a result, this era was also marked by two of the most heinous episodes of racial violence in the state’s history: the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921 and the Osage Murders between 1921 and 1925. In Resisting Oklahoma’s Reign of Terror Joshua Clough details the responses of one largely forgotten Native organization—the Society of Oklahoma Indians (SOI)—to the violence and pillaging of tribal resources during the 1920s. Clough provides historical understanding of its formation and its shared values of intertribal unity, Native suffrage, and protection of Native property. He also reveals why reform efforts were nearly impossible in 1920s Oklahoma and how this historical perspective informs today’s conflicts between the state and its Indigenous inhabitants. Through this examination of the SOI, Clough fills the historiographic gap regarding formal Native resistance between the dissolution of the national Society of American Indians in 1923 and the formation of the National Congress of American Indians in 1944. Dismissed or overlooked for a century as an inconsequential Native activist organization, the history of the SOI, when examined carefully, reveals the sophistication and determination of tribal members in their struggle to prevent depredations on their persons and property.







Encyclopedia of Terrorism, Revised Edition


Book Description

Presents a reference guide to terrorism throughout the world, including history, terrorist groups, and notorious acts of terrorism.




Reign of Terror


Book Description

A New York Times Critics’ Top Book of 2021 "An impressive combination of diligence and verve, deploying Ackerman’s deep stores of knowledge as a national security journalist to full effect. The result is a narrative of the last 20 years that is upsetting, discerning and brilliantly argued." —The New York Times "One of the most illuminating books to come out of the Trump era." —New York Magazine An examination of the profound impact that the War on Terror had in pushing American politics and society in an authoritarian direction For an entire generation, at home and abroad, the United States has waged an endless conflict known as the War on Terror. In addition to multiple ground wars, the era pioneered drone strikes and industrial-scale digital surveillance; weakened the rule of law through indefinite detentions; sanctioned torture; and manipulated the truth about it all. These conflicts have yielded neither peace nor victory, but they have transformed America. What began as the persecution of Muslims and immigrants has become a normalized feature of American politics and national security, expanding the possibilities for applying similar or worse measures against other targets at home, as the summer of 2020 showed. A politically divided and economically destabilized country turned the War on Terror into a cultural—and then a tribal—struggle. It began on the ideological frontiers of the Republican Party before expanding to conquer the GOP, often with the acquiescence of the Democratic Party. Today’s nativist resurgence walked through a door opened by the 9/11 era. And that door remains open. Reign of Terror shows how these developments created an opportunity for American authoritarianism and gave rise to Donald Trump. It shows that Barack Obama squandered an opportunity to dismantle the War on Terror after killing Osama bin Laden. By the end of his tenure, the war had metastasized into a bitter, broader cultural struggle in search of a demagogue like Trump to lead it. Reign of Terror is a pathbreaking and definitive union of journalism and intellectual history with the power to transform how America understands its national security policies and their catastrophic impact on civic life.




Lone Star Unionism, Dissent, and Resistance


Book Description

Most histories of Civil War Texas—some starring the fabled Hood’s Brigade, Terry’s Texas Rangers, or one or another military figure—depict the Lone Star State as having joined the Confederacy as a matter of course and as having later emerged from the war relatively unscathed. Yet as the contributors to this volume amply demonstrate, the often neglected stories of Texas Unionists and dissenters paint a far more complicated picture. Ranging in time from the late 1850s to the end of Reconstruction, Lone Star Unionism, Dissent, and Resistance restores a missing layer of complexity to the history of Civil War Texas. The authors—all noted scholars of Texas and Civil War history—show that slaves, freedmen and freedwomen, Tejanos, German immigrants, and white women all took part in the struggle, even though some never found themselves on a battlefield. Their stories depict the Civil War as a conflict not only between North and South but also between neighbors, friends, and family members. By framing their stories in the analytical context of the “long Civil War,” Lone Star Unionism, Dissent, and Resistance reveals how friends and neighbors became enemies and how the resulting violence, often at the hands of secessionists, crossed racial and ethnic lines. The chapters also show how ex-Confederates and their descendants, as well as former slaves, sought to give historical meaning to their experiences and find their place as citizens of the newly re-formed nation. Concluding with an account of the origins of Juneteenth—the nationally celebrated holiday marking June 19, 1865, when emancipation was announced in Texas—Lone Star Unionism, Dissent, and Resistance challenges the collective historical memory of Civil War Texas and its place in both the Confederacy and the United States. It provides material for a fresh narrative, one including people on the margins of history and dispelling the myth of a monolithically Confederate Texas.




Wardship and the Welfare State


Book Description

Wardship and the Welfare State examines the ideological dimensions and practical intersections of public policy and Native American citizenship, Indian wardship, and social welfare rights after World War II. By examining Native wardship's intersections with three pieces of mid-twentieth-century welfare legislation--the 1935 Social Security Act, the 1942 Servicemen's Dependents Allowance Act, and the 1944 GI Bill--Mary Klann traces the development of a new conception of first-class citizenship. Wardship and the Welfare State explores how policymakers and legislators have defined first-class citizenship against its apparent opposite, the much older and fraught idea of Indian wardship. Wards were considered dependent, while first-class citizens were considered independent. Wards were thought to receive gratuitous aid from the government, while first-class citizens were considered responsible. Critics of the federal welfare state's expansion in the 1930s through 1960s feared that as more Americans received government aid, they too could become dependent wards, victims of the poverty they saw on reservations. Because critics believed wardship prevented Native men and women from fulfilling expectations of work, family, and political membership, they advocated terminating Natives' trust relationships with the federal government. As these critics mistakenly equated wardship with welfare, state officials also prevented Native people from accessing needed welfare benefits. But to Native peoples wardship was not welfare and welfare was not wardship. Native nations and pan-Native organizations insisted on Natives' government-to-government relationships with the United States and maintained their rights to welfare benefits. In so doing, they rejected stereotyped portrayals of Natives' perpetual poverty and dependency and asserted and defined tribal sovereignty. By illuminating how assumptions about "gratuitous" government benefits limit citizenship, Wardship and the Welfare State connects Native people to larger histories of race, inequality, gender, and welfare in the twentieth-century United States.







Thinking About National Security


Book Description

A Choice Outstanding Academic Title for 2016 Perhaps the most basic national security question that U.S. leaders and the body politic continuously face is where and under what circumstances to consider and in some cases resort to the use of armed force to ensure the country’s safety and well-being. The question is perpetual—but the answer is not. This insightful text helps students make sense of the ever-changing environment and factors that influence disagreement over national security risks and policy in the United States. The book takes shape through a focus on three considerations: strategy, policy, and issues. Snow explains the range of plans of action that are possible and resources available for achieving national security goals, as well as the courses of action for achieving those goals in the context of a broad range of security problems that must be dealt with. However, there is little agreement among policymakers on exactly what is the nature of the threats that the country faces. Snow helps readers frame the debate by suggesting some of the prior influences on risk-assessment, some of the current influences on national security debates, and suggestions for how future strategy and policy may be shaped.




Combating Domestic Terrorism


Book Description




Nationality Between Poststructuralism and Postcolonial Theory


Book Description

Nationality Between Poststructuralism and Postcolonial Theory: A New Cosmopolitanism examines and interrogates recent work on nationality in literal, critical and cultural theory. Focusing on the work of Derrida, Deleuze and Guattari, Kristeva, Spivak, and Bhabha, it explores how, for these theorists, the concepts of community, the new International, nomadism, deterritorialization, cosmopolitanism, hospitality, the native informant, hybridity and postcolonial agency can provoke a different understanding of national identity.




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