Recent Publications

A Great and Good Man: Rare Firsthand Accounts and Observations of Abraham Lincoln
Edited by Jonathan W. White and William J. Griffing

One hundred sixty years after Abraham Lincoln’s death it can be difficult to find sources that shed new light on his life, but that is exactly what Jonathan W. White and William J. Griffing have done. A Great and Good Man provides excerpts from more than 200 previously unpublished accounts written by men and women who lived during the Civil War. Some sawLincoln deliver speeches, review the troops, or light up cigars with soldiers. Others offer pointed commentary on his policies and decisions. Through these selections, readers get an in-depth and at times startling view of the Civil War era, from the Lincoln-Douglas Debates of 1858 to the assassination in 1865. Many of the writers loved Lincoln while others reviled him. Some thought he was a good-looking man while others called him ugly. Along the way, other important figures emerge, including Lincoln’s Cabinet members William H. Seward, Salmon P. Chase, and Edwin M. Stanton, generals like Ulysses S. Grant and George B. McClellan, politicians like Stephen A. Douglas, Andrew Johnson, and Horace Greeley, and Lincoln’s wife, Mary Lincoln. An extraordinary portrait of the Civil War drawn from unlikely sources, A Great and Good Man should be in the library of every Lincoln and Civil War enthusiast.

A Wonderful Career in Crime: Charles Cowlam’s Masquerades in the Civil War Era & Gilded Age
Frank W. Garmon Jr.

Charles Cowlam’s career as a convict, spy, detective, congressional candidate, adventurer, and con artist spanned the Civil War, Reconstruction, and Gilded Age. His life touched many of the most prominent figures of the era, including Abraham Lincoln, Jefferson Davis, and Ulysses S. Grant. One contemporary newspaper reported that Cowlam “has as many aliases as there are letters in the alphabet.” He was a chameleon in a world of strangers, and scholars have overlooked him due to his elusive nature. His intrigues reveal how Americans built trust amid the transience and anonymity of the nineteenth century. The stories Cowlam told allowed him to blend into new surroundings, where he quickly cultivated the connections needed to extract patronage from influential members of American society.

My Day with Abe Lincoln
Jonathan W. White

Did you know that Abraham Lincoln was a terrible speller for his entire life? Or that kids teased him on his first day of school because he wore a sunbonnet? Or that he almost died several times when he was a child? Most people don’t know these things about our nation’s greatest president. But Lucy Millaway learns all about Lincoln when she travels back in time to the backwoods of Indiana in the 1820s. Join Lucy as she spends a day with young Abe and discovers fascinating stories and forgotten moments behind his remarkable rise to greatness!

A House Built by Slaves: African American Visitors to the Lincoln White House
Jonathan W. White

Widely praised and winner of the 2023 Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize, this book illuminates why Lincoln’s unprecedented welcoming of African American men and women to the White House transformed the trajectory of race relations in the United States. From his 1862 meetings with Black Christian ministers, Lincoln began inviting African Americans of every background into his home, from ex-slaves from the Deep South to champions of abolitionism such as Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth. More than a good-will gesture, the president conferred with his guests about the essential issues of citizenship and voting rights. Drawing from an array of primary sources, White reveals how African Americans used the White House as a national stage to amplify their calls for equality. Even more than 160 years after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln’s inclusion of African Americans remains a necessary example in a country still struggling from racial divisions today.

Homeland Security: An Introduction
Austen D. Givens, Nathan E. Busch, and Alan Bersin

This book is co-authored with Dr. Austen Givens, Associate Professor of Cybersecurity at Utica College, and Alan Bersin, a former Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security. The book was awarded an advanced contract from Oxford University Press (OUP) in 2017. Over the last three years, we have completed work of writing, revising, and initial copy-editing of the introduction, conclusion, and 12 chapters of the book, and have submitted the manuscript to Oxford University Press.

Ex Parte Milligan Reconsidered: Race and Civil Liberties from the Lincoln Administration to the War on Terror
Edited by Stewart L Winger and Jonathan W. White

At the very end of the Civil War, a military court convicted Lambdin P. Milligan and his co-conspirators in Indiana of fomenting a general insurrection and sentenced them to hang. On appeal, in Ex parte Milligan, the U.S. Supreme Court sided with the conspirators, ruling that it was unconstitutional to try American citizens in military tribunals when civilian courts were open and functioning – as they were in Indiana.

Far from being a relic of the Civil War, the landmark 1866 decision has surprising relevance in our day, as this volume makes clear. Cited in four Supreme Court decisions arising from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Ex parte Milligan speaks to constitutional questions raised by the war on terror; but more than that, the authors of Ex parte Milligan Reconsidered contend, the case affords an opportunity to reevaluate the history of wartime civil liberties from the Civil War era to our own.

Untouched by Conflict: The Civil War Letters of Singleton Ashenfelter, Dickinson College
Daniel Glenn and Jonathan W. White

Nearly three million white men of military age remained in the North during the Civil War, some attending institutions of higher learning. College life during the Civil War has received remarkably little close attention, however, in part because of the lack of published collections of letters and diaries by students during the war.

In Untouched by the Conflict, Jonathan W. White and undergraduate Daniel Glenn seek to fill that gap by presenting the unabridged letters of Singleton Ashenfelter, a student at Dickinson College in Pennsylvania, to his closest friend at home near Philadelphia.

Title IX: The Transformation of Sex Discrimination in Education
Elizabeth Kaufer Busch and William Thro

This book examines the history and evolution of Title IX, a landmark 1972 law prohibiting sex discrimination at educational institutions receiving federal funding. Kaufer Busch and Thro illuminate the ways in which the interpretation and implementation of Title IX have been transformed over time to extend far beyond the law’s relatively narrow statutory text.

The analysis considers the impact of Title IX on athletics, sexual harassment, sexual assault and, for a time, transgender discrimination. Combining legal and cultural perspectives and supported by primary documents, Title IX: The Transformation of Sex Discrimination in Education offers a balanced and insightful narrative of interest to anyone studying the history of sex discrimination, educational policy and the law in the contemporary United States.

The Politics of Weapons Inspections: Assessing WMD Monitoring and Verification Regimes
Nathan E. Busch and Joseph F. Pilat

This book focuses on WMD monitoring and verification regimes—the international mechanisms, including on-site inspections, intended to clarify the status of WMD programs in suspected proliferators. The project, which was undertaken in conjunction with the National Security Office of the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), examines the monitoring and verification regime established by the International Atomic Energy Agency; specific cases where WMD monitoring and verification have been employed, including South Africa, Libya, and Iraq; the verification challenges associated with the prospects of global nuclear disarmament; and the “difficult cases” of Iran, Syria, and North Korea.

Routledge Handbook of Nuclear Proliferation and Policy
Edited by Dr. Nathan Busch and Dr. Joseph F. Pilat

This new handbook is a comprehensive examination of the rich and complex issues of nuclear proliferation in the early 21st century. The future of the decades-long effort to prevent the further spread of weapons of mass destruction is at a crossroads today. If international nonproliferation efforts are to be successful, an integrated, multi-tiered response will almost certainly be necessary. A serious, thorough and clear-eyed examination of the range of threats, challenges and opportunities facing the international community is a necessary first step. This handbook, which presents the most up-to-date analysis and policy recommendations on these critical issues by recognized, leading scholars in the field, intends to provide such an examination.