Gettysburg College Faculty Books

Printing is not supported at the primary Gallery Thumbnail page. Please first navigate to a specific Image before printing.

Switch View to Grid View Slideshow

George M. Leader, 1918-2013

Michael J. Birkner and Charles H. Glatfelter

Publication Date: 2014

George M. Leader (1918-2013), a native of York, Pennsylvania, rose from the anonymous status of chicken farmer's son and Gettysburg College undergraduate to become, first a State Senator, and then the 36th governor of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. A steadfast liberal in a traditionally conservative state, Leader spent his brief time in the governor's office (1955-1959) fighting uphill battles and blazing courageous trails. He overhauled the state's corrupt patronage system; streamlined and humanized its mental health apparatus; and, when a black family moved into the white enclave of Levittown, took a brave stand in favor of integration.

After politics, Leader became a pioneer in the area of assisted living, with a chain of Lutheran nursing homes in central Pennsylvania. He multiplied his philanthropies, endowing a nursing center, funding education and reintegration programs for prisoners, and providing supplies and expertise to impoverished Ghana. By the time of his death, George M. Leader had lived as vigorous, productive, and - to use a word he might have appreciated - useful a life as any Pennsylvanian of his time.

On three occasions in 2006 and 2007, Gettysburg College history professors Michael J. Birkner and Charles H. Glatfelter engaged the former governor in interviews about his life and times. Leader talked expansively and candidly about his wins and losses, his prides and regrets; the excitement and bitterness of politics, the satisfactions of philanthropy, and the sustenance of family. These interviews, ranging over nearly a century of political and state history, tell the story of one of Pennsylvania's most remarkable sons.
The Governors of New Jersey: Biographical Essays

Michael J. Birkner, Donald Linky, and Peter Mickulas

Publication Date: 2-2014

Rogues, aristocrats, and a future U.S. president. These and other governors are portrayed in this revised and updated edition of the classic reference work on the chief executives of New Jersey. Editors Michael J. Birkner, Donald Linky, and Peter Mickulas present new essays on the governors of the last three decades—Brendan T. Byrne, Thomas Kean, James Florio, Christine Todd Whitman, Donald DiFrancesco, James McGreevey, Richard Codey, and Jon Corzine. The essays included in the original edition are amended, edited, and corrected as necessary in light of new and relevant scholarship.

The authors of each governor’s life story represent a roster of such notable scholars as Larry Gerlach, Stanley Katz, Arthur Link, and Clement Price, as well as many other experts on New Jersey history and politics. As a result, this revised edition is a thorough and current reference work on the New Jersey governorship—one of the strongest in the nation. [From the publisher]
Derrida's Voice and Phenomenon: An Edinburgh Philosophical Guide

Vernon W. Cisney

Publication Date: 6-2014

This work provides a detailed analysis of Derrida's 1967 book, Voice and Phenomenon, contextualizing it in the broader history of French receptions of the phenomenological tradition.
The Moroccan Women's Rights Movement

Amy Y. Evrard

Publication Date: 6-2014

Among various important efforts to address women’s issues in Morocco, a particular set of individuals and associations have formed around two specific goals: reforming the Moroccan Family Code and raising awareness of women’s rights. Evrard chronicles the history of the women’s rights movement, exploring the organizational structure, activities, and motivations with specific attention to questions of legal reform and family law. Employing ethnographic scrutiny, Evrard presents the stories of the individual women behind the movement and the challenges they faced. Given the vast reform of the Moroccan Family Code in 2004, and the emphasis on the role of women across the Middle East and North Africa today, this book makes a timely argument for the analysis of women’s rights as both global and local in origin, evolution, and application. [From the publisher]
Psalms for Skeptics (101-150)

Kent L. Gramm

Publication Date: 9-2014

Sparked by phrases from the book of Psalms, these poems question and occasionally affirm our everyday ideas about life, mortality, the afterlife, God, family, and belief. In vigorous contemporary language—complaining, lamenting, and wisecracking on everything from Job's wife to baseball, crows to angels, circus elephants to Mary Magdalene—but in traditional form, these sonnets, or little songs, "speak what we feel, not what we ought to say." [From the publisher]
Material Relations: The Marriage Figurines of Prehispanic Honduras

Julia A. Hendon, Rosemary A. Joyce, and Jeanne Lopiparo

Publication Date: 2-2014

Focusing on marriage figurines—double human figurines that represent relations formed through social alliances—Hendon, Joyce, and Lopiparo examine the material relations created in Honduras between AD 500 and 1000, a period when a network of social houses linked settlements of a variety of sizes in the region. The authors analyze these small, seemingly insignificant artifacts using the theory of materiality to understand broader social processes.

They examine the production, use, and disposal of marriage figurines from six sites—Campo Dos, Cerro Palenque, Copán, Currusté, Tenampua, and Travesia—and explore their role in rituals and ceremonies, as well as in the forming of social bonds and the celebration of relationships among communities. They find evidence of historical traditions reproduced over generations through material media in social relations among individuals, families, and communities, as well as social differences within this network of connected yet independent settlements.

Material Relations provides a new and dynamic understanding of how social houses functioned via networks of production and reciprocal exchange of material objects and will be of interest to Mesoamerican archaeologists, anthropologists, and art historians.
Stepping Up: Burden Sharing by NATO's Newest Members

Joel R. Hillison

Publication Date: 11-2014

This book examines the burden sharing behavior of new NATO members. It makes the argument that new NATO members are burden sharing at a greater rate than older NATO members. It also suggests that NATO’s expansion did not lead to greater free-riding behavior in NATO, contrary to the predictions of the collective action literature. This analysis reveals that new NATO members have demonstrated the willingness to contribute to NATO missions, but are often constrained by their limited capabilities. This argument is supported using case studies, interviews with key NATO officials, and quantitative analysis of NATO defense expenditures and troop contributions. [From the publisher]
Segment States in the Developing World: Conflict's Cause or Cure?

Matthew Hoddie and Caroline A. Hartzell

Publication Date: 6-2014

This book considers the relationship between territorial autonomy arrangements and ethnic conflict. As a means of ethnic conflict management, autonomy arrangements enjoy wide support among policymakers and academics. Countries ranging from the Sudan, the Philippines, and Britain have in recent years each experimented with the establishment of autonomy arrangements as a means of promoting peaceful interethnic relations.

Philip Roeder’s study, Where Nation States Come From: Institutional Change in the Age of Nationalism, criticizes the use of territorial autonomy arrangements. Roeder contends that provisions for autonomy typically fail to manage tensions effectively between rival ethnic communities. Roeder further argues that provisions for autonomy actually enhance the likelihood that countries will experience interethnic tensions and dissolve along communal lines.

This volume offers a critical examination of Roeder’s claim of a causal relationship between autonomy arrangements and increasing interethnic tensions. It presents case studies of territorial autonomy in the developing states of India, Nicaragua, Cameroon, and China. The case studies suggest that autonomy arrangements may in fact have pacifying effects under particular circumstances. The book concludes with a rejoinder by Roeder in which he offers a vigorous defense of his theory.

This book was originally published as a special issue of Ethnopolitics. [From the publisher]
Voices from D-Day, June 6, 1944

Musselman Library

Publication Date: 2014

Seventy years on from D-Day, we still marvel at the stoic heroism of the men who contributed to the success of what remains the greatest amphibious invasion in the history of warfare. The Normandy campaign would, in one way or another, prove a pivotal moment in the ongoing world war. A disaster in the campaign to liberate France would set back Allied hopes for crushing Nazism in Western Europe. It would also fray the alliance with the Soviet Union that was essential to defeating Hitler’s forces. By contrast, success would mark not just the end of the beginning of the conflict, but the beginning of the end.

There are as many Normandy campaign stories, from both sides, as there are participants. But absent some formal way of collecting them, those stories would disappear with the generation that made this history. That is where oral history comes in. Since the early 1990s, Gettysburg College has done its share to create an archive of World War II memories, covering the gamut of life experience of a generation that grew to maturity during the Great Depression and World War II.

Launched in a Historical Methods course in 1991, and continuing into the present day, the World War II oral history project has collected nearly 700 oral histories from the home and battle fronts and places in between. Recordings and transcriptions of each of these interviews are available in Special Collections at Musselman Library. At some point, if resources are sufficient, they will be digitized and available online. [excerpt]
Souvenir

Kathryn Rhett

Publication Date: 11-2014

A collection of autobiographical essays

Souvenir, a collection of autobiographical essays rooted in the present, investigates travel, staying put, and how it is that our experience of being here right now includes so much of being elsewhere at another time. Rhett reconciles present to past in serious encounters with birth and death, alongside lighter observations. In a world that makes no sense except the sense we make of it, Souvenir plays with the dynamics of home and away to represent the fullness of daily life. [From the publisher]
DEFA at the Crossroads of East German and International Film Culture: A Companion

Marc Silberman and Henning Wrage

Publication Date: 5-2014

Motion picture production, distribution, exhibition and reception has always been a transnational phenomenon, yet East Germany, situated at the edge of the post-war Iron Curtain, separated by a boundary that became materialized in the Berlin Wall in 1961, resembles nothing if not an island, a protected space where film production developed under the protection of government subsidy and ideological purity. This volume proposes on the contrary that the GDR cinema was never just a monologue. Rather, its media landscape was characterized by constant dialogue, if not competition, with both the capitalist West and socialist East. These thirteen essays reshape DEFA cinema studies by exploring international networks, identifying lines of influence beyond national boundaries and recognizing genre qualities that surpass the temporal and spatial confines. The international team of film specialists present detailed analyses of over fifty films, including fiction features, adaptations of literary classics, children's films, documentaries, and examples from genres such as music, sci-fi, Westerns and crime films. [From the publisher]
Crew: Finding Community When Your Dreams Crash

Christin N. Taylor

Publication Date: 8-2014

Most young adults at some point experience a personal "shipwreck"—missing out on the job you wanted, the unexpected end of a relationship, a crisis of faith—that threatens to rip apart the fabric of your identity. What helps navigate a personal shipwreck is to have a crew of reliable people who walk with you through it.

In Crew: Finding Community When Your Dreams Crash, Christin Taylor explores how young adults can both find good company during a time of personal shipwreck and be good company for others who might be experiencing their own shipwreck. In the process, you will learn the hope and security that comes from being part of a community.

Based on sound scriptural principles and the latest research on young adult spiritual formation, Taylor gives young adults the knowledge and perspective you need to build a community that will help you make your way toward a sense of hope and new meaning. [From the publisher]
Picturing Argentina: Myths, Movies, and the Peronist Vision

Currie K. Thompson

Publication Date: 5-2014

No individual has had greater impact on Argentine history than Juan Domingo Perón. The years 1943–1945, when he was an influential member in his nation’s governing junta, and 1946–1955, when he was its president, were tumultuous ones that transformed Argentina. Perón was a highly controversial figure, and his memory continues to provoke intense and often acrimonious debate. Moreover, the nature of his legacy resists neat classification. Many of his achievements were positive. He oversaw the passage of progressive social legislation, including women’s suffrage and prison reform, and he implemented programs that aided the nation’s poor and working classes. On the other hand, he tolerated no opposition and, as president, incarcerated even former supporters who questioned his actions, and he ordered the closure of newspapers that he judged inappropriately critical.

His regime’s impact on the nation’s cinema is similarly difficult to classify. When Perón came to prominence, Argentina had developed one of the two major film industries in Latin America. His government intervened in this sphere to an unprecedented degree and in contradictory ways. It encouraged production by providing financial credits for filmmakers, and in 1948 Perón and his wife, Evita, a former actress, presided over the inauguration of the nation’s international film festival in Mar del Plata. Conversely, his administration blacklisted a remarkable number of directors and performers, censored and prohibited movies, and required all films made in Argentina to portray his regime’s accomplishments in a favorable manner.

Although Perón’s central role in Argentine history and the need for an unbiased assessment of his impact on his nation’s cinema are beyond dispute, the existing scholarship on the subject is limited. In recent decades Argentina has witnessed a revival of serious film study, some of which has focused on the nation’s classical movies and, in one case, on Peronism. None of this work has been translated into English, however. The only recent book in English to study this topic divides its attention between Argentine cinema and radio and dedicates only one chapter to film during the Perón years. Picturing Argentina: Myths, Movies, and the Peronist Vision is the first English-language book that offers an extensive assessment of Argentine cinema during first Peronism. It is also the first study in any language that concentrates systematically on the evolution of social attitudes reflected in Argentine movies throughout those years and that assesses the period’s impact on subsequent filmmaking activity.

By analyzing popular Argentine movies from this time through the prism of myth—second-order communication systems that present historically developed customs and attitudes as natural—the book traces the filmic construction of gender, criminality, race, the family, sports, and the military. It identifies in movies the development and evolution of mindsets and attitudes that may be construed as “Peronist.” By framing its consideration of films from the Perón years in the context of earlier and later ones, it demonstrates that this period accelerates—and sometimes registers backward-looking responses to—earlier progressive mythic shifts, and it traces the development in the 1950s of a critical mindset that comes to fruition in the “new cinema” of the 1960s. [From the Publisher]
Outbreak in Washington, DC: The 1857 Mystery of the National Hotel Disease

Kerry S. Walters

Publication Date: 10-2014

The National was once the grandest hotel in the capital. In 1857, it twice hosted President-elect James Buchanan and his advisors, and on both occasions, most of the party was quickly stricken by an acute illness. Over the course of several months, hundreds fell ill, and over thirty died from what became known as the National Hotel disease. Buchanan barely recovered enough to give his inauguration speech. Rumors ran rampant across the city and the nation. Some claimed that the illness was born of a sewage “effluvia,” while others darkly speculated about an assassination attempt by either abolitionists or southern slaveowners intent on war. Author Kerry Walters investigates the mysteries of the National Hotel disease. [From the publisher]
Profiles in Christian Courage: Extraordinary Inspiration for Everyday Life

Kerry S. Walters

Publication Date: 8-2014

Everyday life requires courage. From physical challenges to moral and spiritual ones, Profiles in Christian Courage tells the stories of inspiring figures whose lives can encourage us in our own struggles. In twenty reader-friendly chapters, Kerry Walters explores the meaning and scope of Christian courage, offers tips on how to cultivate it in daily life, and profiles of Christians who have exemplified it themselves. The portraits are of modern women and men from all parts of the globe. Some are well-known, such as Mother Theresa, C.S. Lewis, or Thea Bowman, while others are less known. Some faced extreme physical threats, while others faced spiritual or emotional darkness. But they are all inspiring role models for everyday courage in our own lives.
America's Public Lands: From Yellowstone to Smokey Bear and Beyond

Randall K. Wilson

Publication Date: 4-2014

How is it that the United States - the country that cherishes the ideal of private property more than any other in the world - has chosen to set aside nearly one-third of its land area as public lands? Considering this intriguing question, Randall K. Wilson traces the often-forgotten ideas of nature that have shaped the evolution of America's public land system. The result is a fresh and probing account of the most pressing policy and management challenges facing national parks, forests, rangelands, and wildlife refuges today. The author explores the dramatic story of the origins of the public domain, including the century-long effort to sell them off and the subsequent emergence of a national conservation ideal.
An Invitation to Abstract Mathematics

Bela Bajnok

Publication Date: 5-2013

This undergraduate textbook is intended primarily for a transition course into higher mathematics, although it is written with a broader audience in mind. The heart and soul of this book is problem solving, where each problem is carefully chosen to clarify a concept, demonstrate a technique, or to enthuse. The exercises require relatively extensive arguments, creative approaches, or both, thus providing motivation for the reader. With a unified approach to a diverse collection of topics, this text points out connections, similarities, and differences among subjects whenever possible. This book shows students that mathematics is a vibrant and dynamic human enterprise by including historical perspectives and notes on the giants of mathematics, by mentioning current activity in the mathematical community, and by discussing many famous and less well-known questions that remain open for future mathematicians. [From the publisher]
Women, Gender, and Print Culture in Eighteenth-Century Britain

Temma F. Berg and Sonia Kane

Publication Date: 10-2013

This edited collection, a tribute to the late noted eighteenth-century scholar Betty Rizzo, testifies to her influence as a researcher, writer, teacher, and mentor. The essays, written by a range of established and younger eighteenth-century specialists, expand on the themes important to Rizzo: the importance of the archive, the contributions of women writers to the canon of eighteenth-century literature and to an emerging print culture, the sometimes fraught relations within the eighteenth-century family, the relationship between life and literature, and, finally, the role of female companionship in women’s lives. Divided into three sections, “Living in the Eighteenth-Century Novel,” “Living in the Eighteenth-Century World,” and “Afterlives,” the fourteen essays that form the body of the collection treat such topics as epistolarity, fraternal relations in novels and in families, women and travel in Jane Austen’s novels, the pleasures and challenges of searching through archives to understand the complex entanglements of eighteenth-century families, the changing reception of Alexander Pope’s poetry, and intersections among race, class, gender, and sexuality in a famous early-nineteenth-century Scottish libel case. The final essay of the fourteen connects the archetypal eighteenth-century figure of the seduced and abandoned woman to Sophie Calle’s 2007 Venice Biennale exhibition entitled Take Care of Yourself, which the author reads as a direct descendant of the eighteenth-century letter novel. The book is framed by an introduction that situates the book as part of the ongoing redefinition of the archive of eighteenth-century literature and an afterword that gives a personal account of Rizzo’s career and her indelible legacy as friend, mentor, and professional model. The contributors use a variety of methods in their scholarship, but a common strand is archival research and close reading inflected by feminist analysis. The contributors to the volume practice the kind of scholarship Rizzo was known for—painstaking archival research and attention to the nuances of relationships among eighteenth-century women (and men)—and in so doing shed new light on a number of familiar and not-so-familiar eighteenth-century texts.
The Street Corner Marionettes of Mexico: A History of the Puppet Company

Lucio Espindola, Lourdes Pérez Gay, Amaranta Leyva, Cárdenas Noé, and Ronald Burgess

Publication Date: 6-2013

This is a translation from Spanish of the book titled, Marionetas de la Esquina Tras Bambalinas, which documents Las Marionetas de la Esquina, one of present-day Mexico’s longest enduring puppet theater groups. It’s the story of a small group’s obsession in perfecting an art form, in this case, one especially aimed at entertaining children.
Charles Dickens in Love

Robert Garnett

Publication Date: 12-2013

When Charles Dickens died in 1870 he was the best-known man in the English-speaking world—the pre-eminent Victorian celebrity. Yet when the first person named in his will turned out to be an unknown woman named Ellen Ternan, only a handful of people had any idea who she was, and her conspicuous presence in his will was a mystery.

She was not the first woman who had fired his imagination. As a young man he had fallen deeply in love with Maria Beadnell. A few years later he was stunned by the sudden death of his young sister-in-law, Mary Scott Hogarth, and worshiped her memory for the rest of his life.

Using hundreds of primary sources, Charles Dickens in Love narrates the story of the most intense romances of Dickens’s life, and shows how his novels both testify to his own strongest affections and serve as memorials to the young women he loved all too well, if not always wisely. [From the Publisher]
Gettysburg: The Last Invasion

Allen C. Guelzo

Publication Date: 2013

From the acclaimed Civil War historian, a brilliant new history—the most intimate and richly readable account we have had—of the climactic three-day battle of Gettysburg (July 1–3, 1863), which draws the reader into the heat, smoke, and grime of Gettysburg alongside the ordinary soldier, and depicts the combination of personalities and circumstances that produced the greatest battle of the Civil War, and one of the greatest in human history.

Of the half-dozen full-length histories of the battle of Gettysburg written over the last century, none dives down so closely to the experience of the individual soldier, or looks so closely at the sway of politics over military decisions, or places the battle so firmly in the context of nineteenth-century military practice. Allen C. Guelzo shows us the face, the sights, and the sounds of nineteenth-century combat: the lay of the land, the fences and the stone walls, the gunpowder clouds that hampered movement and vision; the armies that caroused, foraged, kidnapped, sang, and were so filthy they could be smelled before they could be seen; the head-swimming difficulties of marshaling massive numbers of poorly trained soldiers, plus thousands of animals and wagons, with no better means of communication than those of Caesar and Alexander.

What emerges is an untold story, from the trapped and terrified civilians in Gettysburg’s cellars to the insolent attitude of artillerymen, from the taste of gunpowder cartridges torn with the teeth to the sounds of marching columns, their tin cups clanking like an anvil chorus. Guelzo depicts the battle with unprecedented clarity, evoking a world where disoriented soldiers and officers wheel nearly blindly through woods and fields toward their clash, even as poetry and hymns spring to their minds with ease in the midst of carnage. Rebel soldiers look to march on Philadelphia and even New York, while the Union struggles to repel what will be the final invasion of the North. One hundred and fifty years later, the cornerstone battle of the Civil War comes vividly to life as a national epic, inspiring both horror and admiration. [From the Publisher]
A Woman’s Framework for a Successful Career and Life

James E. Hamerstone and Lindsay Musser Hough

Publication Date: 7-2013

Targeted specifically at women just entering or re-entering the workforce, A Woman's Framework for a Successful Career and Life is a comprehensive resource for any woman navigating her career while seeking balance in her life. The authors lay out the building blocks of a successful lifelong career, focusing on blending skills such as communication, negotiation, leadership, career path navigation, ambition, mentoring, work-life fit, and personal branding, all of which need to be done in a global environment. Each topic includes a summary of key research and offers realistic, concrete suggestions for how any woman can achieve success in both her career and life. [From the Publisher]
Religion: A Mosaic

Louis J. Hammann

Publication Date: 2-2013

Can we say of Religion what the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy said of Economics: It is not one homogeneous enterprise? If so, then what is religion as a plural phenomenon? Should we understand religious traditions as carriers of revealed truth in the current age of empirical science? Or should we appreciate the power of the human imagination to satisfy our curiosity? Can human ingenuity reconcile the psychological and historical biases of religious traditions? Can we see them as both individual and communal realities? I propose to understand religious traditions under the rubric of a metaphor. They are mosaics, subtle designs of human experiences-designs that have emerged from the human struggle of coping with the constant impulse to make sense of life. Human ingenuity is capable of creating counter-cultural communities that persist as chains of memory. Their historical function is celebrating relationships that define our destiny and who we are.
Congressional Parties, Institutional Ambition, and the Financing of Majority Control

Eric S. Heberlig and Bruce A. Larson

Publication Date: 4-2013

Close competition for majority party control of the U.S. House of Representatives has transformed the congressional parties from legislative coalitions into partisan fundraising machines. With the need for ever increasing sums of money to fuel the ongoing campaign for majority control, both Republicans and Democrats have made large donations to the party and its candidates mandatory for members seeking advancement within party and congressional committee hierarchies.

Eric S. Heberlig and Bruce A. Larson not only analyze this development, but also discuss its implications for American government and democracy. They address the consequences of selecting congressional leaders on the basis of their fundraising skills rather than their legislative capacity and the extent to which the battle for majority control leads Congress to prioritize short-term electoral gains over long-term governing and problem-solving. [From the publisher]
From German Prisoner of War to American Citizen: A Social History With 35 Interviews

Barbara S. Heisler

Publication Date: 8-2013

Among the many German immigrants to the United States over the years, one group is unusual: former prisoners of war who had spent between one and three years on American soil and who returned voluntarily as immigrants after the war. Drawing on archival sources and in-depth interviews with 35 former prisoners who immigrated, the book outlines the conditions and circumstances that defined their unusual experiences and traces their journeys from captive enemies to American citizens. Although the respondents came from different backgrounds, and arrived in America at different times between 1943 and 1945, their experiences as prisoners of war not only left an indelible impression on their minds, they also provided them with opportunities and resources that helped them leave Germany behind and return to the place "where we had the good life." [From the publisher]