bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
A randomized multiplex CRISPRi-Seq approach for the identification of critical combinations of genes
Authors: Ellis Nicole A. , Myers Kevin S. , Tung Jessica , Ward Anne Davidson , Johnston Kathryn , Bonnington Katherine E. , Donohue Timothy J. , Machner Matthias P.
Published: May 2023

Identifying virulence-critical genes from pathogens is often limited by functional redundancy. To rapidly interrogate the contributions of combinations of genes to a biological outcome, we have developed a
mu
ltiplex,
r
andomized
C
RISPR
i
nterference
s
equencing (MuRCiS) approach. At its center is a new method for the randomized self-assembly of CRISPR arrays from synthetic oligonucleotide pairs. When paired with PacBio long-read sequencing, MuRCiS allowed for near-comprehensive interrogation of all pairwise combinations of a group of 44
Legionella pneumophila
virulence genes encoding highly conserved transmembrane proteins for their role in pathogenesis. Both amoeba and human macrophages were challenged with
L. pneumophila
bearing the pooled CRISPR array libraries, leading to the identification of several new virulence-critical combinations of genes.
lpg2888
and
lpg3000
were particularly fascinating for their apparent redundant functions during
L. pneumophila
human macrophage infection, while
lpg3000
alone was essential for
L. pneumophila
virulence in the amoeban host
Acanthamoeba castellanii
. Thus, MuRCiS provides a method for rapid genetic examination of even large groups of redundant genes, setting the stage for application of this technology to a variety of biological contexts and organisms.
The Geography of Order
Authors: Patel David Siddhartha
Published: May 2023

This chapter presents empirical evidence about the importance, effectiveness, and limits of Friday mosque sermons in creating social order. Other things equal, localities with a single Friday mosque in postinvasion Basra exhibited greater levels of social order than localities that have either no Friday mosque or more than one Friday mosque. Clerics have an ability to make information common knowledge in areas where residents all hear a single sermon and know that everyone else in that area also heard the sermon. The chapter develops the idea of a Friday mosque's “catchment area”: the geographical area from which a mosque attracts a population to use its services. It looks at ethnographic observations and interviews conducted in Basra over seven months from late 2003 to early 2004 and two weeks in 2011, as well as journalistic accounts, surveys, and data from nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). The chapter then complements this by using maps and geographic information system (GIS) techniques to demonstrate, insofar as available data allow, a spatial relationship between mosque location and murders in Basra. Finally, it explores the history of urban geography in Basra and explains why mosques in the city are located where they are.
The Rise of the Military Entrepreneur
Authors: Sutherland Suzanne
Published: May 2023

This book explores how a new kind of international military figure emerged from, and exploited, the seventeenth century's momentous political, military, commercial, and scientific changes. In the era of the Thirty Years' War, these figures traveled rapidly and frequently across Europe using private wealth, credit, and connections to raise and command the armies that rulers desperately needed. Their careers reveal the roles international networks, private resources, and expertise played in building and at times undermining the state. The book uncovers the influence of military entrepreneurs by examining their activities as not only commanders but also diplomats, natural philosophers, information brokers, clients, and subjects on the battlefield, as well as through strategic marital and family allegiances. It focuses on Raimondo Montecuccoli (1609–80), a middling nobleman from the Duchy of Modena, who became one of the most powerful men in the Austrian Habsburg monarchy and helped found a new discipline, military science. The book explains how Montecuccoli successfully met battlefield, court, and family responsibilities while contributing to the world of scholarship on an often violent, fragmented political-military landscape. As a result, the book shifts the perspective on war away from the ruler and his court to instead examine the figures supplying force, along with their methods, networks, and reflections on those experiences.
Beleaguered Bureaucrats
Authors: Ding Iza
Published: May 2023

This chapter presents an ethnographic case study of performative governance at work, which is based on five months of participant observation at a municipal environmental protection bureau (EPB) in China and interviews with government officials and EPB bureaucrats in other Chinese cities. It describes the inner workings and public performances of the EPB that distinguishes performative governance from its main conceptual alternative, substantive governance. It also looks at the fears and aspirations of the EPB's street-level bureaucrats, which sheds light on the simultaneous rationality and irrationality of performative governance. The chapter discusses EPB's formal mandates that must take a back seat while it polishes and preserves its public image, which directly impacts its agents' career security. It also highlights three key attributes of performative governance: appearing responsive to public opinion; demonstrating the benevolence of the state's intentions; and making these efforts visible to the public.
Performative Breakdown
Authors: Ding Iza
Published: May 2023

This chapter emphasizes that performative governance is not always effective at impressing its audience, analyzing one case of performative success and three cases of performative breakdown. It argues that performative breakdown can result from a state's failure at information control, specifically when destructive information about the discrepancies between the state's image and practices is revealed to the public. It also cites the Flint water crisis in Michigan and the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan to demonstrate the power of destructive information in bringing state malpractice to light. The chapter analyzes water crises in what are widely considered the “most similar” regimes of China and Vietnam. It shows how variation in the level of control wielded by the China and Vietnam regimes over their respective information environments helps explain why performative governance was effective at appeasing public opinion in the Chinese case, but not in Vietnam.
Victims and Perpetrators
Authors: Cronin-Furman Kate
Published: May 2023

This chapter establishes that accountability for mass atrocities also has the kind of high domestic political stakes that could motivate states to undertake quasi-compliant responses. It shows that post-atrocity governments face a complex balancing act of competing motivations before international pressure even enters the picture. International audiences aren't just an additional source of demands for justice, they are also partners in the pursuit of accountability. The chapter discusses obstacles, capacity, and resource challenges that can have a devastating impact on a transitional justice process's ability to meet its goals. International actors have their own set of preferences about what justice should look like, which may clash with a post-atrocity government's incentives.
Components of a Moral Economy
Authors: Minn Pierre
Published: May 2023

This chapter illustrates a moral economy of international medical aid in Haiti, and examines the morally saturated categories of interest, credit, and debt in order to reveal some of the less visible dimensions of aid encounters. Young Haitian clinicians see their interests as lying abroad. Meanwhile, foreign aid groups' interests in strengthening Haiti’s health care system are increasingly contingent on the nonemigration of Haitian professionals. While Haitian clinicians assert that not receiving recognition for their efforts is an important factor in fueling their departure, foreign aid workers, volunteers, and students continue to receive various forms of credit for their work in Haiti. Finally, aid and emigration are both responses to and instigators of various types of debt, ranging from remittances to the relatives who contributed to visa fees and a plane ticket to Miami to the care of strangers as a form of giving back one’s good fortune.
Saints, Villains, and Champions
Authors: Minn Pierre
Published: May 2023

This chapter presents an analysis of three archetypal figures that emerge in portrayals of aid interventions in Haiti: saints, villains, and champions. It uses the case of physician-anthropologist Paul Farmer to study how and why foreign health professionals (particularly physicians) are depicted as saints. A close examination of his life and work not only provides information about key actors in Haiti’s health sector but also affords insight into the place of charismatic individuals in transnational health interventions, and context for debates around “white saviors” and neocolonialism in global health. Analyzing Farmer’s work also sheds light on the emergence of secular humanitarianism in Europe and North America in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The chapter then considers how Haitian clinicians are often cast as champions or villains—either self-sacrificing for a cause exterior to themselves or morally corrupt and a threat to the integrity of humanitarian endeavors.
Bound by Bondage
Authors: Maskiell Nicole Saffold
Published: May 2023

During the first generations of European settlement in North America, a number of interconnected Northeastern families carved out private empires. This book argues that slavery was a crucial component to the rise and enduring influence of this emergent aristocracy. Dynastic families built prestige based on shared notions of mastery, establishing sprawling manorial estates and securing cross-colonial landholdings and trading networks that stretched from the Northeast to the South, the Caribbean, and beyond. The members of this elite class were mayors, governors, senators, judges, and presidents, and they were also some of the largest slaveholders in the North. Aspirations to power and status, grounded in the political economy of human servitude, ameliorated ethnic and religious rivalries, and united once antagonistic Anglo and Dutch families, ensuring that Dutch networks endured throughout the English and then Revolutionary periods. The book traces the origin of these private familial empires back to the founding generations of the Northeastern colonies and follows their growth to the eve of the American Revolutionary War. It reveals a multiracial Early America, where enslaved traders, woodsmen, millers, maids, bakers, and groomsmen developed expansive networks of their own that challenged the power of the elites, helping in escapes, in trade, and in simple camaraderie. The book includes a new chapter in the history of early North America and connects developing Northern networks of merit to the invidious institution of slavery.
Father and Son
Authors: Gundur R. V.
Published: May 2023

This chapter chronicles the story of a fourteen-year-old José Raul “Raulio” Rivera Fierro when his father died in 1973. As the chapter highlights, José's relationship with his father wasn't one of father and son bonding over fishing and camping trips or playing catch. The chapter follows how José started huffing glue and getting into trouble at school. He got a reputation as the “bad” Rivera child and was often accused of wrongdoing, although he was only sometimes responsible. As a branded troublemaker, José joined Los Diablos, a gang based out of the Sandoval housing projects where he lived. The chapter then elucidates what being part of a gang meant to José. It also recounts the time when José was sent to the Coffield Unit near Tennessee Colony, Texas, and how he founded Barrio Azteca in the early 1980s which evolved into one of the largest and most violent prison gangs in the Texas prison system. The chapter looks at José's radical departure from the environment where he had committed most of his crimes. It then examines how it mirrored the stories told by most of the few others who had truly left gang life behind them.
La Carrucha
Authors: Gundur R. V.
Published: May 2023

This chapter highlights El Paso's status as a prime transshipment point which makes the city valuable for any business that needs to ship products, legal or not, from Mexico to the United States. Compared to Juárez, which has become known for its violence in the twenty-first century, the chapter underlines that El Paso is a sleepy city with little violent crime. It argues that bringing visible violence to the US side of the border would increase risk and undermine business. The chapter then shifts to examine the other side of the bridge, Barrio Azteca—the city's most notorious drug trade “businessmen.” Barrio Azteca remains associated with the violence of Juárez, having been involved in two of the most violent and publicly covered events in the city. The border may separate the two cities, but both cities have been affected by the history of Barrio Azteca. To understand this history, the chapter ventures far from the Paso del Norte area to the medium-and high-security prison farms in the eastern part of Texas. It then investigates the evolution of the Texas Department of Corrections and the history of corrections in Texas.
The Street
Authors: Gundur R. V.
Published: May 2023

This chapter follows the journey of the author in El Paso to help paint a picture of the way the drug trade unfolded in the city. As the chapter narrates, several people who had been involved in gangs in the 1980s described how much their scene changed in that decade alone. It highlights how different the gang scene was then compared to the mid-2010s. The chapter also looks at the initial stages of the group's transformation from a party crew into a street gang. It emphasizes that in the impoverished parts of town, street gangs ran with a goal to “protect” their blocks. By the 2010s, however, significant violence in El Paso was a thing of the past. Everyone had a different idea as to why El Paso had become peaceful. Some credited the efforts of the police department, especially community policing and community outreach programs. The chapter reviews the two gang-related identities of most Latino gang members: one on the street and another in prison. The distinction is not incidental; the roles and allegiances forged in the context of the street are different from those hammered out in prison.
The Oasis
Authors: Gundur R. V.
Published: May 2023

This chapter tracks the author's journey in New Mexico. It begins to discuss the first town that he passed: Chaparral, a place that had come up in conversations during his time in El Paso. Some immigrant families prefer to settle in Chaparral because property there is less expensive than in El Paso and because it is a small community where folks know each other. The chapter then emphasizes that New Mexico is one of the five poorest states in the nation. Many of the towns rang of small-town America, centered around quaint local grocery stores. Over four hundred miles from El Paso is Greater Phoenix, which lies in a large, flat valley, an area twice as large as El Paso and home to a rapidly growing population, nearing four and a half million people. The chapter underlines that Phoenix proper is home to over one and a half million people, making it the sixth-largest city in the United States and about the same size as Juárez.
Catching Cases
Authors: Gundur R. V.
Published: May 2023

This chapter discusses the American dream and argues that this idealism always has been just a dream for the vast majority of people who live in the United States. For most, as the chapter emphasizes, the American dream is a far more constrained concept underwritten by the reality that while it is possible to work toward improving one's station in life, hard work does not unequivocally translate into success. Following the discussion on people on remand or in prison, the chapter first highlights that the United States incarcerates more people than any other country in terms of both absolute numbers and as a percentage of population. It then follows the story of the Flores twins, Peter and Junior, who dabbled in the drug trade and wholesale marijuana business. The chapter underlines that the twins had a decidedly unusual foray into the illicit drug business: unlike most who had to work their way up the drug trade by first taking risks on the street corner and then progressing step-by-step up the ladder, Peter and Junior walked into a wholesaling job—something akin to walking straight into middle management with no experience. The chapter elaborates on what a “drug cartel” is. It stresses that the drug trade is made up of several organizations working in concert with one another. Some named “cartels” have organizations, with independent leadership, operating under their banner.
Vital Strife
Authors: Parris Benjamin
Published: May 2023

This book examines the close yet puzzling relationship between sleep and ethical care in early modernity. The plays, poems, and philosophical essays at the heart of this book—by Jasper Heywood, William Shakespeare, Edmund Spenser, John Milton, and Margaret Cavendish—explore the unconscious motions of corporeal life and the drowsy forms of sentience at the boundaries of human thought and intentionality. The book shows how these writers, although trained under the Renaissance humanist paradigm of attentive care, begin to dissolve the humanist coupling of virtue with vigilance by giving credence to the vital power of sleep. In contrast to humanist thinkers who equated sleep with carelessness, these writers draw on the ancient Stoic principle of oikeiôsis—the process of orienting the living being toward its proper objects of care, beginning with itself—in asserting the value of sleep, while underscoring insomnia's threat to the ethical flourishing of persons and polity alike. The book offers an important revaluation of Stoic philosophy, which has too often been misconstrued as renouncing feeling and sympathetic connection with others. With its new account of the reception of Stoicism and attitudes toward sleep and sleeplessness in early modern thought, the book reveals the period's mounting concern with the regenerative nature of physical life and its elaboration of a newfound ethics of care.
Heavy with Care
Authors: Parris Benjamin
Published: May 2023

This chapter presents a genealogy of sleep and care that illuminates both the humanist worries over sleep as well as the responses to such concerns constituted by works of drama and poetry. It begins by showing how sleep occupies a compelling place in the ancient Greek philosophies of Heraclitus, Plato, and Aristotle, before moving to an account of its unique role in Stoic thought and in that school's doctrine of oikeiôsis. The chapter examines implications of the Stoic argument that oikeiôsis continues even in sleep, an idea that departs from earlier Greek ethical thought which conceives a stricter separation between the life of sleep and the human good. The notion of sleep as an inferior form of life also informs Christian political theologies of sleep and spiritual vigilance, from the Pauline epistles to writings of early monastic communities whose members weaponized wakefulness as a means to resist demonic temptation and fleshliness. The chapter then demonstrates how these perspectives inform Renaissance humanist theologians from Erasmus to Calvin to Luther. Such commitments to vigilant care reflect a longstanding connection between wakefulness and virtue in western thought.
Chicago in Stone and Clay
Authors: Wiggers Raymond
Published: May 2023

This book explores the interplay between the Chicago's most architecturally significant sites, the materials they're made of, and the sediments and bedrock they are anchored in. The book demonstrates the fascinating and often surprising links between science, art, engineering, and urban history. Drawing on two decades of experience leading popular geology tours in Chicago, the author crafted the book for readers ranging from the region's large community of amateur naturalists, “citizen scientists,” and architecture buffs to geologists, architects, educators, and other professionals seeking a new perspective on the themes of architecture and urbanism. Unlike most geology and architecture books, this one is written in the informal, accessible style of a natural history tour guide, humanizing the science for the nonspecialist reader. Providing an exciting new angle on both architecture and natural history, the author uses an integrative approach that incorporates multiple themes and perspectives to demonstrate how the urban environment presents us with a rich geologic and architectural legacy.
Chicago’s Geologic Setting and History
Authors: Wiggers Raymond
Published: May 2023

This chapter explores the geologic setting and history of Chicago. It elaborates on geology as an intensely historical science, referencing the formation of the region's bedrock during the Paleozoic era, Silurian period, Pennsylvanian subperiod, and Quaternary period. When geologists cite the structural branch of their science, they refer to the identification and interpretation of features in the Earth's crust. While the structures are not immediately evident at the surface due to the planing effect of erosion, the structures did play a crucial role in determining the ecological and depositional environments of the past, and the subsequent economic resources of the present. The chapter also features a geologic time scale with representative Chicago building materials.
Foundations
Authors: Wiggers Raymond
Published: May 2023

This chapter details the foundation and engineering of skyscrapers in Chicago. According to Roman author Marcus Vitruvius Pollio's famous treatise On Architecture, any building should follow three cardinal values: utilitas, firmitas, and venustas. The chapter explains how Chicago served as the home of many skyscrapers due to its bedrock being deep underground. Additionationally, the exact composition and thicknesses of the layers of till and lakebed sediments vary from neighborhood to neighborhood and even block to block, as does the depth to bedrock. The chapter explores the challenges of erecting ever larger and heavier structures in the city's treacherous substrate, referencing the build of Custom House and Windy City buildings.
The Loop
Authors: Wiggers Raymond
Published: May 2023

This chapter explores the history and architectural designs of buildings found in the Chicago Loop's Northwestern Quadrant. The Italianate-style Delaware Building stands as a noble survivor of a once much more extensive roster of Loop buildings constructed in the first few years after the Great Fire of 1871. The 1 N. LaSalle Street is another example of a building following the Grand Art Deco Formula. The chapter considers the architects at Clark Street Bridge Houses and 77 W. Wacker Drive. It also highlights the geologic features of the Hyatt Center, New York Life Building, First National Bank of Chicago and Inland Steel Building.
Mckinley Park, Back of the Yards, Kenwood, Washington Park, Hyde Park, Woodlawn, and Englewood
Authors: Wiggers Raymond
Published: May 2023

This chapter examines the geologic features of buildings in McKinley Park, Back of the Yards, Kenwood, Washington Park, Hyde Park, Woodlawn, and Englewood. William McKinley Memorial was erected to honor the memory of the twenty-fifth US president and was built from Devonian-period granite. Meanwhile, the Union Stockyards Gate is the only survivor of the once extensive Union Stockyards, which was attributed to the architectural partnership of Burnham ＆ Root. The chapter cites how Hyde Park Union Church has the presence of Portage Red variety of Michigan's Jacobsville Sandstone. It also mentions that the University of Chicago Bookstore offers a glimpse of the Vermont Unfading Green Slate, which is an interesting metamorphic rock type.
The Magnificent Mile and Streeterville
Authors: Wiggers Raymond
Published: May 2023

This chapter discusses the Magnificent Mile and Streeterville buildings. It acknowledges the Wrigley Building as part of Chicago's greatest icons ever since its completion. Additionally, due to its over-the-top neo-Gothic skyscraper design, the Tribune Tower is also one of the city's most massive outcrops of Salem Limestone. The building contains a collection of rock specimens, architectural ornaments, and archaeological artefacts from famous historical sites across the world. The chapter then details the geologic features of Medinah Health Club, the McGraw-Hill Building, and the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District Building. It notes the Deer Isle Granite being used for Drake Hotel and Drake Tower.
The Presence of Christ in Social Dynamics
Authors: Kieckhefer Richard
Published: May 2023

This chapter presents how the theme of Christ's recognized presence becomes articulated within the social dynamics of communities. To put the point more sharply: the texts here go further and see Christ as a member along with others, interacting with them as they interact with each other, within the immanent sphere of the community. The experience of Christ's presence might be viewed as an intensely private experience, nurtured inwardly by individuals. The chapter underlines that such experience always occurs within a social context: it is conditioned by contact with others, and it ripples through the life of a community. The chapter also discusses the social context for the later Dominican houses. Broadly speaking, Helfta and the Dominican houses were alike in being communities of shared devotional culture, in which sisters took a lively interest in revelations to other sisters and in which the community was seen as specially elect and itself the subject of revelation.
The Problematics of Presence
Authors: Kieckhefer Richard
Published: May 2023

This chapter demonstrates how speaking of Christ as overtly manifest could, of course, become problematic. It discusses how intuition could be vague, fleeting, and uncertain. Further, the tendency to remember and report intuition in terms of perception could be unreliable and misleading. Recognizing these problems, medieval Christians were alert to the possibilities of false memory, self-deception, illusion and delusion, and deliberate invention. The chapter also looks at how the absence of Christ was also a factor that complicated a sense of his presence, although his absence in one mode does not preclude his presence in others; if there are different modes of presence, there are also different modes of absence. All these issues were on the minds of pious Christians in the late medieval West. The chapter examines how these problems are discussed in the sources.
Competing Visions
Authors: Schmidli William Michael
Published: May 2023

This chapter tackles the collapse of the bipartisan Cold War consensus in the late 1960s after the Vietnam War. It also explores the subsequent impact of the Cold War on US foreign relations. During the détente era, domestic critics and liberal internationalists contested the Nixon and Ford administrations' realist approach to international relations. Even though Jimmy Carter embraced human rights late in the campaign, the issue fit neatly with his administration's vision of forging a new approach. The chapter cites that the Carter administration's commitment to human rights, noninterventionism, and multilateralism underpinned the thirty-ninth president's signal achievements in foreign affairs and Ronald Reagan's 1980 election victory.
From the Cold War to the End of History
Authors: Schmidli William Michael
Published: May 2023

This chapter expounds on denouement in US–Nicaraguan Cold War relations. The administration of George H. W. Bush sought to maintain US pressure on Nicaragua without Ronald Reagan's incendiary and divisive rhetoric. The interventionism defining Reagan's approach to democracy promotion remained a potent element in Bush's foreign policy. The chapter considers the work of secretary of state James A. Baker III in shifting the focus from the Contras to the 1990 Nicaraguan elections while also highlighting the power of democratic initiative. It cites how the White House won bipartisan support in its effort to maintain the Contra threat and US economic pressure as well as provide an infusion of funds for the electoral opposition.
“They Are Enemies of the State!”
Authors: Newsome W. Jake
Published: May 2023

This chapter illustrates how understandings of sexuality influenced the exercise of state power in the Third Reich and drove the Nazis' efforts to remove various groups from the German national community. It situates Germany's campaign against people whose gender and sexuality did not align with Nazi ideals in the context of a broader redefinition of citizenship along racial and sexual lines. Doing so provides a fuller and more nuanced understanding of Nazi ideology and the regime's genocidal campaign to forge a homogeneous, “racially pure” and superior German society. The chapter also sketches the historical, lived experiences of queer people that later became the foundation for the postwar memories that are the focus of this book. Examining the fate of lesbian, bi, trans, and other queer Germans who were not targeted with a specific law comparable to the application of Paragraph 175 against men—but who nonetheless had to suppress their identities amid a state-sponsored campaign to destroy queer culture and communities—offers a glimpse into the challenges and dangers of everyday life in the Third Reich.
Introduction
Authors: Praspaliauskiene Rima
Published: May 2023

This chapter explores how public health care and its medical culture that is infused with seemingly unethical and corrupt practices has carried on for so many decades of Soviet socialism and postsocialist capitalism. It explains how the configuration of such care made sense for patients, their relatives, and doctors, and how the privatization and marketization of health care emerged as a dominant alternative to curtail it. The chapter examines the little white envelope as an ethnographic concept through the notion of relations, complicating the distinction between gifts and bribes, money and payment, transparency, and corruption. It perceives the ethnography as a concept-making genre and its concepts as “concrete abstractions.”
Stunted Civic Duty in Reunified Germany
Authors: Hur Aram
Published: May 2023

This chapter answers the question why East Germans vote less than West Germans. It demonstrates that through the German General Social Survey, there is a regional gap in the civic duty to vote that mirrors the turnout gap. Using historical analysis, the chapter traces the civic-duty deficit back to the very process that was meant to bring Germans together: reunification. It talks about how speedy reunification led by the West suddenly left many Easterners, who had been socialized into a distinctly Eastern identity over a past century, under a new state that they viewed as representing the best interests of “the other” Germany. This abrupt shift fractured beliefs of nation–state linkage for many Easterners while solidifying strong linkage for Westerners, producing regionally contrasting national stories and divergent potential for civic duty to the unified state.
Sold
Authors: Starks Tricia
Published: May 2023

This chapter expounds on the revolutionary advertising and communist consumption of tobacco. Since the art and messages of the tobacco packs sparked sensory reveries of tobacco indulgence, capitalist industrial designers exploited the senses to excite the buyer's desires. Thus, advertising's positive portrayals of smoking provided a compelling counter to Semashko's propaganda. The chapter also notes how portrayals of smoking in films in the west glamorized and spread the habit. However, tobacco's addictive qualities helped it maintain users, but the social pressure of tobacco's near omnipresence among soldiers and the working class cemented its status as a habit of the people.
The Rise and Fall of Protestant Brooklyn
Authors: Blumin Stuart M. , Altschuler Glenn C.
Published: May 2023

This book tells the story of nineteenth-century Brooklyn's domination by upper- and middle-class Protestants with roots in Puritan New England. This lively history describes the unraveling of the control they wielded as more ethnically diverse groups moved into the “City of Churches” during the twentieth century. Before it became a prime American example of urban ethnic diversity, Brooklyn was a lovely and salubrious “town across the river” from Manhattan, celebrated for its churches and upright suburban living. But challenges to this way of life issued from the sheer growth of the city, from new secular institutions—department stores, theaters, professional baseball—and from the licit and illicit attractions of Coney Island, all of which were at odds with post-Puritan piety and behavior. Despite these developments, the Yankee–Protestant hegemony largely held until the massive influx of Southern and Eastern European immigrants in the twentieth century. As the book demonstrates, in their churches, synagogues, and other communal institutions, and on their neighborhood streets, the new Brooklynites established the ethnic mosaic that laid the groundwork for the theory of cultural pluralism, giving it a central place within the American Creed.
Epilogue
Authors: Blumin Stuart M. , Altschuler Glenn C.
Published: May 2023

This chapter discusses Frederick Boyd Stevenson, who wanted immigrants to think in English and rejected the legitimacy of one man's declaration of divided affection for America and his country of origin. It details how Stevenson ultimately accepted immigration restriction as the only solution to the problems posed by the New Immigrants. It also reviews the skepticism on the amalgamation of cultures and attempts to reshape immigrants into a pre-existing American form. The chapter emphasizes the threat to Western Civilization by a population explosion among non-white races, their migration to parts of the world, and the impending collapse of colonialism. Horace Kallen's Democracy Versus the Melting Pot: A Study of American Nationality challenged the melting pot on behalf of “cultural pluralism.”
Creolizing the Modern
Authors: Parvulescu Anca , Boatcamp;a Manuela
Published: May 2023

How are modernity, coloniality, and interimperiality entangled? Bridging the humanities and social sciences, this book provides innovative decolonial perspectives that aim to creolize modernity and the modern world-system. Historical Transylvania, at the intersection of the Habsburg Empire, the Ottoman Empire, Austria-Hungary, and Russia, offers the platform for their multi-level reading of the main themes in Liviu Rebreanu's 1920 novel Ion. Topics range from the question of the region's capitalist integration to antisemitism and the enslavement of Roma to multilingualism, gender relations, and religion. The book develops a comparative method for engaging with areas of the world that have inherited multiple, conflicting imperial and anti-imperial histories.
The Face of Land
Authors: Parvulescu Anca , Boatcă Manuela
Published: May 2023

This chapter examines Transylvania's turn-of-the-century agrarian economy. It references the modern account of the intersections of colonial and imperial interests, hierarchies, and strategies of control that coincides with the notion of inter-imperiality. Liviu Rebreanu's 1920 novel Ion provides commentary on the processes of formalizing land rights, including rights to common land. Formalization involved common land being divided into quota shares according to an algorithm that translated old servitudes and rights to land. As a result, the process of formalization was teeming with legal battles. The chapter cites the case of Transylvania which highlighted the importance of advancing the commodity frontier in the region.
Escalation in a New Political Landscape
Authors: Andreas Peter
Published: May 2023

This chapter considers the transformed political landscape following the presidential campaign and presidency of Donald Trump. Trump boldly promised to change the rules and achieve victory over the border challenges under the pretense of making America great again. However, his promise resulted in limiting his movements as his political opponents denounced his projects and glossed over the fact that the country spent decades building up the border barriers. The chapter also mentions that Trump called the migrants ‘criminal invaders’ and declared a national emergency to divert military funds. The chapter then covers the border politics during the pandemic when the Trump administration declared a national emergency and restricted all nonessential travel across the country's borders.
Subversion on Trial
Authors: Delury John
Published: May 2023

This chapter recounts how Beijing shocked the CIA by announcing John Downey and Richard Fecteau were alive and imprisoned. It discusses the diplomatic struggle in which Dwight Eisenhower and his secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, denied all charges of espionage and subversion. It also details how Chairman Mao Zedong and Premier Zhou Enlai used the case to denounce American imperialist aggression. The chapter covers the trial and sentencing of the eleven airmen along with the two spies, which would thrust the American prisoners into the center of the maelstrom of US–China relations. The American prisoners began receiving letters from family in early September 1954, a sign of progress toward release and proof that the world knew of their plight.
Adirondack Anniversary
Authors: Dickinson Rachel
Published: May 2023

This chapter looks back to a wedding anniversary spent at the Garnet Hill Lodge in the Adirondacks. The occasion marked twenty-one years of marriage, the success of which the chapter attributes to the couple's frequent travels alone, which leave time for one to miss the other. Yet here in the Adirondacks the author and her husband must now find a way to spend time alone together, even as they're being haunted by Jack's death. By then the writer still struggles with her feelings, unable to fully focus on the anniversary or her husband, unable to escape being perceived by others in terms of her grief. Momentary peace is found at the sound of children playing.
Clara and Jack Sing a Duet
Authors: Dickinson Rachel
Published: May 2023

This chapter discusses the author's feelings upon viewing a duet performed at her daughter's graduation ceremony the year prior to the suicide. It was a duet played between Jack and his sister, and was a performance that the author had missed and regretted having done so at the time. The author confesses to feeling awkward and uncomfortable in events like graduation ceremonies, not knowing how to feel or act in such formal settings. Part of this hesitation also comes from a fear of embarrassing or disappointing her children. The chapter concludes with the notion that by avoiding such events the author has made herself an outsider in her children's lives.
Train Robbers and Pinkertons
Authors: Dickinson Rachel
Published: May 2023

This chapter recounts the time the author had applied to Goucher College's MFA program in creative nonfiction. At the time, Goucher's was the only program which dealt exclusively in nonfiction—a boon for an author who wanted to focus on the subject. The chapter thus chronicles the author's academic career during this period, including the selection of a thesis topic (and why it should not be about Jack) and illuminating process of archival research. During this time the author was not thinking about her grief but focusing on where her research led-down a historical rabbit hole of vigilantism, the Civil War, train robberies, Midwestern gangs, and the Pinkerton Detective Agency. In doing so, the author was able to find an outlet for something other than grief during the three-year MFA program.
Hope Is a Strange Invention
Authors: Dickinson Rachel
Published: May 2023

This chapter attempts to define hope during a time when the author had precious little of it. If hope here was about “believing in a future,” then the author has since “embraced hopelessness.” The chapter is an exploration of hope and hopelessness and the difference between hope and optimism. There is a particular focus on Charles R. Snyder's hope theory, in which hope equals agency plus pathways. The chapter considers the merits of this theory before seeking out hopelessness in less scientific endeavors—primarily through books which lingered on the emotions after death and suicide. Eventually, however, the author comes to a realization that she had focused too much on the “agency” aspect of the equation and not nearly enough on the “pathways,” hence why her constant need to travel and escape.
Thrown for a Loop
Authors: Dickinson Rachel
Published: May 2023

This chapter narrates the time the author had fallen ill during what would have been Jack's nineteenth birthday. The diagnosis was vestibular neuritis. Vestibular: meaning relating to or affecting the perception of body position and movement. Neuritis: meaning inflammation of a peripheral nerve or nerves, usually causing pain and loss of function. In short, the chapter describes this condition as “the physical embodiment of being thrown for a loop.” It explores the author's experiences being treated and recovering from the ordeal, struggling to seek out a sense of “balance” after the initial attack of vertigo. Here, “balance” relates not to balancing one's work, family, home, and self, but to something more “primal and elemental,” when one's body and the world itself do not become an obstacle.
Pursuit of Aloneness
Authors: Dickinson Rachel
Published: May 2023

This chapter focuses on the origins of the author's penchant for running away. It begins with chronicles of her travels throughout Scotland to do a self-directed study about James Hutton, the eighteenth-century father of modern geology. A couple of decades after this trip, the chapter embarks on the author's journey into journalistic writing, beginning with writing about her village in the Ithaca Journal to travel writing at more prestigious publications. This eventually led to the author's habit of traveling frequently and alone. The chapter also covers the interlude during which the author suffered from vestibular neuritis, where she remained stationary, her whole world now shrunken and confined “to a Green Chair in a Pink House filled with family castoffs.” This eventually leads to considerations about moving out of the house and returning to travel writing.
Give Up the Ghost
Authors: Dickinson Rachel
Published: May 2023

This chapter focuses on the phrase, “give up the ghost.” It mulls over various interpretations of the saying and how it relates to the author's life. The first meaning refers to the changing seasons, as the author waits for autumn to turn into winter. The second meaning is freeing up space in the author's mind for thoughts other than a dead son. Indeed, the author considers that it might be time for her son to stop haunting the house with his presence—or lack thereof. In so doing the chapter ruminates on the need to move on, yet still preferring to dwell upon the familiarity of the absence/presence of Jack.
What Would I Take If My House Was on Fire?
Authors: Dickinson Rachel
Published: May 2023

This chapter presents a thought exercise, as the author considers what item might be worth rescuing from the house during a fire. This proves to be a difficult endeavor, as the author's house is filled with tangible objects representing various memories, despite the fact that some of them are either broken or contain painful memories. Furthermore, the author feels a sense of responsibility to maintain family stories through various items cluttered around the house. The chapter also considers with awe a friend of the author's who shares the opposite attitude, who has little in the way of “family things” stored away. The author, however, still holds on to her attachment for her “ancestral burdens,” pondering that only dementia or a house fire will free her of them for good.
The Dude Ranch
Authors: Dickinson Rachel
Published: May 2023

This chapter details a trip to a dude ranch in Arizona. It talks about the author's need to travel to faraway places where she will not be recognized and where she can be “anonymous and alone.” The trip to Arizona, however, was different. This was because the trip was for attending a conference in Scottsdale, of which she was a regular, which meant that there were many people there who knew her story. Despite this, prior to the conference the author had spent time at the Tanque Verde guest ranch outside Tucson. She discusses her fascination with dude ranches and especially with horses, though given her medical condition she knew that riding them would be dangerous. Instead, she went birding once again, and later reflected on the brief happiness she was able to experience at Tanque Verde.
Soft Edges
Authors: Dickinson Rachel
Published: May 2023

This chapter details the author's attempts to cope through painting. Painting had become a way of replacing writing, as at the time the author still had difficulty with Jack's memory and with the compulsion to write about it. Painting, however, became a way for her to “live with the world.” Copying in watercolor buildings and then paintings of buildings by other people had felt safe. It also provided structure. Yet at the same time the task presents its own unique difficulties, as the author discusses how she can never achieve a “soft edge”—a painting technique which creates a blurry transition, as it would require leaving the comforting boundaries she had built around herself. Yet the author also wonders if it might be time for her to start creating soft edges, to remove boundaries and finally let people in.
The Other Jack Gallagher
Authors: Dickinson Rachel
Published: May 2023

This chapter considers death and mourning. It tells the story of another Jack Gallagher, an acquaintance of Jack's ophthalmologist. This Jack Gallagher became a geologist, and he and the doctor remained friends for many years. One day this Jack Gallagher went to Cape Cod, walked into the sea, and was never heard from nor seen again. The author considers this story in light of her son's death and how she wishes to perceive it from then on. She takes a look at her Green Chair, which has been the site of mourning for so many years, seeing it in a new light as a launchpad which will release her from her sad past and catapult her into the future. She realizes that she is the only one who can put Jack “in his place” so she can move on.
Origins
Authors: Kaplan Edward
Published: May 2023

This chapter discusses how the Net Evaluation Subcommittee (NESC) came to exist as an outgrowth of NSC 68, a key enunciation of grand strategy for the early Cold War. The chapter begins by considering the elements of airpower, atomic weapons, and the balance between offense and defense. The chapter then looks at the role of risk in military operations. NSC 68's authors believed that if the Soviets thought both that they could succeed in surprising the United States and that such a surprise would be decisive, US deterrence could fail and the risk might be unacceptable. This framed the essential question: at what point would the USSR possess an ability to attack the US decisively and with surprise? In the context of the existing war plans, when would the USSR be able to launch a surprise attack on US nuclear forces and military-associated industry such that it would derail both a US atomic offensive and conventional mobilization? On the last full day of the Truman administration, the National Security Council adopted NSC 140, establishing a Special Evaluation Subcommittee (SESC).