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The AEF in Print: An Anthology of American Journalism in World War I

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The AEF in Print is an anthology that tells the story of U.S. involvement in World War I through newspaper and magazine articles—precisely how the American public experienced the Great War. From April 1917 to November 1918, Americans followed the war in their local newspapers and popular magazines. The book’s chapters are organized chronologically: Mobilization, Arrival in Europe, Learning to Fight, American Firsts, Battles, and the Armistice. Also included are topical chapters, such as At Sea, In the Air, In the Trenches, Wounded Warriors, and Heroes. “Some of these stories are real gems. Irving Cobb’s account of the sinking of the SS Tuscania, for example, is absolutely riveting, and the same can be said of William Shepherd’s description of life aboard US Navy destroyers in the Atlantic, Floyd Gibbons’s narration of his wounding at Belleau Wood, and George Pattullo’s roll-out of the Sergeant York legend.” —Steven Trout, author of On the Battlefield of Memory: The First World War and American Remembrance. “The well-written and evocative articles bring the war to life.” —Jennifer Keene, author of Doughboys, the Great War, and the Remaking of America.
Date: May 2018
Creator: Dubbs, Chris & Kelley, John-Daniel
System: The UNT Digital Library

The Art of Trumpet Teaching: The Legacy of Keith Johnson

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Keith Johnson retired in 2014 from the University of North Texas, where he was Regents Professor of Trumpet and was honored with the Distinguished Teaching Professor award. Johnson wrote more than thirty articles, two pedagogical texts, and two method books. During his career, he presented masterclasses at universities and conservatories throughout the United States and worldwide. Johnson’s former students hold positions in universities, orchestras, and military ensembles in over a dozen countries. In The Art of Trumpet Teaching, his students describe Johnson’s teaching approach and tireless work to help each person succeed. Along with Johnson’s biography and studio stories, Leigh Anne Hunsaker presents an extensive collection of pedagogical concepts from Johnson’s six decades of teaching. Johnson’s hallmark pedagogical tenets, along with much practical advice given to his UNT students, provide a teaching and reference handbook for a new generation of teachers and players.
Date: May 2022
Creator: Hunsaker, Leigh Anne
System: The UNT Digital Library

Beneath Missouri Skies: Pat Metheny in Kansas City 1964-1972

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The New Yorker recently referred to Pat Metheny as “possibly the most influential jazz guitarist of the past five decades.” A native of Lee’s Summit, Missouri, just southeast of Kansas City, Metheny started playing in pizza parlors at age fourteen. By the time he graduated from high school he was the first-call guitarist for Kansas City jazz clubs, private clubs, and jazz festivals. Now 66, he attributes his early success to the local musical environment he was brought up in and the players and teachers who nurtured his talent and welcomed him into the jazz community. Metheny’s twenty Grammys in ten categories speak to his versatility and popularity. Despite five decades of interviews, none have conveyed in detail his stories about his teenage years. Beneath Missouri Skies also reveals important details about jazz in Kansas City during the sixties and early seventies, often overlooked in histories of Kansas City jazz. Yet this time of cultural change was characterized by an outstanding level of musicianship.
Date: May 2021
Creator: Brewer, Carolyn Glenn
System: The UNT Digital Library

The Bridges of Vietnam: From the Journals of U. S. Marine Intelligence Officer

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As an intelligence officer during the Vietnam War, Fred L. Edwards, Jr., was instructed to visit every major ground unit in the country to search for intelligence sources—long range patrols, boats, electronic surveillance, and agent operations. “Edwards found time to keep a journal, an extremely well-written, sharply observed report of his adventures. Along with contemporary postscripts and a helpful historical chronology, that journal is a significant improvement on most Vietnam memoirs. It is the record of a Marine’s on-the-job education.”—Proceedings
Date: May 15, 2001
Creator: Edwards, Fred L., Jr.
System: The UNT Digital Library

A Bright Soothing Noise

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Stan Kenton (1911–1979) formed his first full orchestra in 1940 and soon drew record-breaking crowds to hear and dance to his exciting sound. He continued to tour and record unrelentingly for the next four decades. Stan Kenton: This Is an Orchestra! sums up the mesmerizing bandleader at the height of his powers, arms waving energetically, his face a study of concentration as he cajoled, coaxed, strained, and obtained the last ounce of energy from every musician under his control. Michael Sparke’s narrative captures that enthusiasm in words: a lucid account of the evolution of the Kenton Sound, and the first book to offer a critical evaluation of the role that Stan played in its creation. “Michael Sparke’s book, the first general history of the Kenton Orchestra, is the best evaluation yet of Kenton’s 40-year musical development.”—The Wall Street Journal
Date: May 15, 2010
Creator: Brown, Peter
System: The UNT Digital Library

Cataclysm: General Hap Arnold and the Defeat of Japan

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In Cataclysm, Herman S. Wolk examines the thinking and leadership of General Henry H. (Hap) Arnold, Commanding General, Army Air Forces (AAF), during World War II. Specifically, Wolk concentrates on Arnold’s role in crafting the weapons, organization, and command of the strategic bombing offensive against Japan. The B-29 long-range bombing campaign against the Japanese home islands dictated unprecedented organization and command; hence, Arnold established the Twentieth Air Force, commanded by himself from Washington and reporting directly to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Arnold excelled in his command of the AAF, relieving a long-time colleague (Hansell) in favor of a hard-nosed operator (LeMay). This crucial move was a turning point in the Pacific War. In the spring and summer of 1945, Arnold was a driven leader, almost willing the B-29 campaign and the air and sea blockade to collapse Japan before the scheduled massive invasion of Kyushu on November 1st. Arnold agreed that politically the atomic bomb shocked the Japanese to capitulation, but as the architect of the bombing offensive, he emphasized that Japan was already defeated in the summer of 1945 by the bombing and blockade, and that it was not militarily necessary to drop the atomic bomb. Wolk brings …
Date: May 15, 2010
Creator: Wolk, Herman S.
System: The UNT Digital Library

CEDAR: The Life and Music of Cedar Walton

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Grammy Award–winning pianist, bandleader, and composer Cedar Walton (1934–2013) is a major figure in jazz, associated with a variety of styles from bebop to funk and famous for composing several standards. Born and raised in Dallas, Walton studied music in Denver, where he jammed with musicians such as Charlie Parker and John Coltrane. In 1955, Walton moved to New York, immediately gaining recognition from notable musicians and nightclub proprietors. When Walton returned to the U.S. after serving abroad in the Army, he joined Benny Golson and Art Farmer’s Jazztet. Later, he became both pianist and arranger for Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers. Next, he worked as part of Prestige Records’s house rhythm section, recording with numerous greats and releasing his own albums. One hallmark of Walton’s impact is his numerous long-term collaborations with giants such as trombonist Curtis Fuller and drummer Billy Higgins. By the end of his career, Walton’s discography, as both band member and bandleader, included many dozens of vaunted recordings with some of the most notable jazz musicians of the 1960s through the first decade of the twenty-first century. Ben Markley conducted more than seventy-five interviews with friends and family members, musicians who played with or were otherwise …
Date: May 2023
Creator: Ben Markley
System: The UNT Digital Library

Civil War General and Indian Fighter James M. Williams: Leader of the 1st Kansas Colored Volunteer Infantry and the 8th U.S. Cavalry

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The military career of General James Monroe Williams spanned both the Civil War and the Indian Wars in the West, yet no biography has been published to date on his important accomplishments, until now. From his birth on the northern frontier, westward movement in the Great Migration, rush into the violence of antebellum Kansas Territory, Civil War commands in the Trans-Mississippi, and as a cavalry officer in the Indian Wars, Williams was involved in key moments of American history. Like many who make a difference, Williams was a leader of strong convictions, sometimes impatient with heavy-handed and sluggish authority. Building upon his political opinions and experience as a Jayhawker, Williams raised and commanded the ground-breaking 1st Kansas Colored Volunteer Infantry Regiment in 1862. His new regiment of black soldiers was the first such organization to engage Confederate troops, and the first to win. He enjoyed victories in Missouri, Indian Territory (Oklahoma), and Arkansas, but also fought in the abortive Red River Campaign and endured defeat and the massacre of his captured black troops at Poison Spring. In 1865, as a brigadier general, Williams led his troops in consolidating control of northern Arkansas. Williams played a key role in taking Indian …
Date: May 15, 2013
Creator: Lull, Robert W.
System: The UNT Digital Library

Conducting Opera: Where Theater Meets Music

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Conducting Opera discusses operas in the standard repertory from the perspective of a conductor with a lifetime of experience performing them. It focuses on Joseph Rescigno’s approach to preparing and performing these masterworks in order to realize what opera can uniquely achieve: a fusion of music and drama resulting in a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. Opening with a chapter discussing his performance philosophy, Rescigno then covers Mozart’s most-performed operas, standards of the bel canto school including Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia, five of Verdi’s works including La traviata, a selection of Wagner’s compositions followed by French Romantic operas such as Bizet’s Carmen, Puccini’s major works, and finally four operas by Richard Strauss. A useful appendix contains a convenient guide to the scores available online. Conducting Opera includes practical advice about propelling a story forward and bringing out the drama that the music is meant to supply, as well as how to support singers in their most difficult moments. Rescigno identifies particularly problematic passages and supplies suggestions about how to navigate them. In addition, he provides advice on staying true to the several styles under discussion.
Date: May 2020
Creator: Rescigno, Joseph
System: The UNT Digital Library

Confessions of a Horseshoer

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Confessions of a Horseshoer offers a close and personal look at the mind-set of a professional horseshoer (farrier) who also happens to be a college professor. The book, an ironic and playful view of the many unusual animals (and people) Ron Tatum has encountered over thirty-seven years, is nicely balanced between straightforward presentation, self-effacing humor, and lightly seasoned wisdom. It captures the day-to-day life of a somewhat cantankerous old guy, who has attitude and strong opinions. Throughout the book, Tatum ponders the causes that led him into the apparently opposing worlds of horseshoeing, with its mud, pain, and danger, and the bookish life of a college professor. He tells the reader that it is his hope that writing the book will help him understand this apparent paradox between the physical and the mental. Tatum provides a detailed description of the horseshoeing process, its history, and why horses need shoes in the first place. The reader will learn about the dangers of shoeing horses in “Injuries I Have Known,” in which Tatum describes one particular self-inflicted injury that he claims no other horseshoer has ever, or will ever, experience. “Eight Week Syndrome” demonstrates the close, often therapeutic, relationship between the horseshoer …
Date: May 15, 2012
Creator: Tatum, Ron
System: The UNT Digital Library

Country Cop: True Tales from a Texas Deputy Sheriff

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Book is author's memoir about his years as a Deputy Sheriff in Parker County, Texas. He served as a patrol officer, public relations officer, and as a member of the Crimes Against Children division, among other duties.
Date: May 2020
Creator: Goodson, Barry
System: The UNT Digital Library

Death on Base: The Fort Hood Massacre

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When Army psychiatrist Nidal Hasan walked into the Fort Hood Soldier Readiness Processing Center and opened fire on soldiers within, he perpetrated the worst mass shooting on a United States military base in our country’s history. Death on Base is an in-depth look at the events surrounding the tragic mass murder that took place on November 5, 2009, and an investigation into the causes and influences that factored into the attack. The story begins with Hasan's early life in Virginia, continues with his time at Fort Hood, Texas, covers the events of the shooting, and concludes with his trial. The authors analyze Hasan's connections to radical Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki and Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and demonstrate how radical Islam fueled Hasan’s hatred of both the American military and the soldiers he treated. Hasan's mass shooting is compared with others, such as George Hennard's shooting rampage at Luby's in Killeen in 1991, Charles Whitman at the University of Texas, and Virginia Tech shooter Seung-Hui Cho. The authors explore the strange paradox that the shooting at Fort Hood was classified as workplace violence rather than a terrorist act. This classification has major implications for the victims of the …
Date: May 2015
Creator: Porterfield, Anita Belles
System: The UNT Digital Library

Dennis Brain: a Life in Music

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The British horn player Dennis Brain (1921–1957) is commonly described by such statements as “the greatest horn player of the 20th Century,” “a genius,” and “a legend.” He was both a prodigy and popularizer, famously performing a concerto on a garden hose in perfect pitch. On his usual concert instrument his tone was of unsurpassed beauty and clarity, complemented by a flawless technique. The recordings he made with Herbert von Karajan of Mozart’s horn concerti are considered the definitive interpretations. Brain enlisted in the English armed forces during World War II for seven years, joining the National Symphony Orchestra in wartime in 1942. After the war he filled the principal horn positions in both the Philharmonia and Royal Philharmonic Orchestras. He later formed his own wind quintet and began conducting. Composers including Benjamin Britten and Paul Hindemith lined up to write music for him. Even fifty years after his tragic death at the age of 36 in an auto accident in 1957, Peter Maxwell Davies was commissioned to write a piece in his honor. Stephen Gamble and William Lynch have conducted numerous interviews with family, friends, and colleagues and uncovered information in the BBC archives and other lesser known sources …
Date: May 15, 2011
Creator: Gamble, Stephen & Lynch, William C.
System: The UNT Digital Library

The Diaries of John Gregory Bourke: Volume 4, July 3, 1880-May 22, 1881

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John Gregory Bourke kept a monumental set of diaries beginning as a young cavalry lieutenant in Arizona in 1872, and ending the evening before his death in 1896. As aide-de-camp to Brigadier General George Crook, he had an insider's view of the early Apache campaigns, the Great Sioux War, the Cheyenne Outbreak, and the Geronimo War. Bourke's writings reveal much about military life on the western frontier, but he also was a noted ethnologist, writing extensive descriptions of American Indian civilization and illustrating his diaries with sketches and photographs. Previously, researchers could consult only a small part of Bourke’s diary material in various publications, or else take a research trip to the archive and microfilm housed at West Point. Now, for the first time, the 124 manuscript volumes of the Bourke diaries are being compiled, edited, and annotated by Charles M. Robinson III, in a planned set of eight books easily accessible to the modern researcher. Volume 4 chronicles the political and managerial affairs in Crook’s Department of the Platte. A large portion centers on the continuing controversy concerning the forced relocation of the Ponca Indians from their ancient homeland along the Dakota-Nebraska line to a new reservation in the …
Date: May 15, 2009
Creator: Bourke, John Gregory
System: The UNT Digital Library

Duty to Serve, Duty to Conscience : the Story of Two Conscientious Objector Combat Medics During the Vietnam War

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Despite all that has been written about Vietnam, the story of the 1-A-O conscientious objector, who agreed to put on a uniform and serve in the field without weapons rather than accept alternative service outside the military, has received scarce attention. This joint memoir by two 1-A-O combat medics, James C. Kearney and William H. Clamurro, represents a unique approach to the subject. It is a blend of their personal narratives—with select Vietnam poems by Clamurro—to illustrate noncombatant objection as a unique and relatively unknown form of Vietnam War protest. Both men initially met during training and then served as frontline medics in separate units “outside the wire” in Vietnam. Clamurro was assigned to a tank company in Tay Ninh province next to the Cambodian border, before reassignment to an aid station with the 1st Air Cavalry. Kearney served first as a medic with an artillery battery in the 1st Infantry Division, then as a convoy medic during the Cambodian invasion with the 25th Infantry Division, and finally as a Medevac medic with the 1st Air Cavalry. In this capacity Kearney was seriously wounded during a “hot hoist” in February 1971 and ended up being treated by his friend Clamurro …
Date: May 2023
Creator: Kearney, James C. & Clamurro, William H.
System: The UNT Digital Library

Graham Barnett: A Dangerous Man

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Graham Barnett was killed in Rankin, Texas, on December 6, 1931. His death brought an end to a storied career, but not an end to the legends that claimed he was a gunman, a hired pistolero on both sides of the border, a Texas Ranger known for questionable shootings in Company B under Captain Fox, a deputy sheriff, a bootlegger, and a possible “fixer” for both law enforcement and outlaw organizations. In real life he was a good cowboy, who provided for his family the best way he could, and who did so by slipping seamlessly between the law enforcement community and the world of illegal liquor traffickers. Stories say he killed unnumbered men on the border, but he stood trial only twice and was acquitted both times. Barnett lived in the twentieth century but carried with him many of the attitudes of old frontier Texas. Among those beliefs was that if there were problems, a man dealt with them directly and forcefully—with a gun. His penchant to settle a score with gunplay brought him into confrontation with Sheriff W. C. Fowler, a former friend, who shot Barnett with the latter’s own submachine gun on loan. One contemporary summed it …
Date: May 2017
Creator: Coffey, James L.; Drake, Russell M. & Barnett, John T.
System: The UNT Digital Library

Ground Pounder: a Marine's Journey Through South Vietnam, 1968-1969

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In early February of 1968, at the beginning of the Tet Offensive, Private First Class Gregory V. Short arrived in Vietnam as an eighteen-year-old U.S. Marine. Amid all of the confusion and destruction, he began his tour of duty as an 81mm mortarman with the 2nd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, which was stationed at Con Thien near the DMZ. While living in horrendous conditions reminiscent of the trenches in World War I, his unit was cut off and constantly being bombarded by the North Vietnamese heavy artillery, rockets, and mortars. Soon thereafter Short left his mortar crew and became an 81mm’s Forward Observer for Hotel Company. Working with the U.S. Army’s 1st Air Cavalry Division and other units, he helped relieve the siege at Khe Sanh by reopening Route 9. Short participated in several different operations close to the Laotian border, where contact with the enemy was often heavy and always chaotic. On May 19, Ho Chi Minh’s birthday, the NVA attempted to overrun the combat base in the early morning hours. Tragically, during a two-month period, one of the companies (Foxtrot Company) within his battalion would sustain more than 70 percent casualties. By September Short was transferred to the …
Date: May 15, 2012
Creator: Short, Gregory V.
System: The UNT Digital Library

King Fisher: The Short Life and Elusive Career of a Texas Desperado

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America’s Wild West created an untold number of notorious characters, and in southwestern Texas, John King Fisher (1855– 1884) was foremost among them. To friends and foes alike, he insisted he be called “King.” He found a home in the tough sun-beaten Nueces Strip, a lawless land between the Nueces River and the Rio Grande. There he gathered a gang of rustlers around him at his ranch on Pendencia Creek. For a decade King and his gang raided both sides of the Rio Grande, shooting down any who opposed them. Newspapers claimed King killed potential witnesses—he was never convicted of cattle or horse stealing, or murder. King’s reign ended when he was arrested by Texas Ranger Captain Leander McNelly. In no uncertain terms he advised Fisher to change his ways, so King became deputy sheriff of Uvalde County. But his hard-won respectability would not last. On a spring night in 1884, King made the mistake of accompanying the truly notorious gambler and gunfighter Ben Thompson on a tour of San Antonio, where several years prior Thompson shot down Jack Harris at the latter’s saloon and theater, the Vaudeville. Recklessly, King Fisher accompanied Thompson back to the theater, where assassins were …
Date: May 2022
Creator: Parsons, Chuck & Bicknell, Thomas C.
System: The UNT Digital Library

Larry McMurtry and the West: An Ambivalent Relationship

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This is the first major single-authored book in almost twenty years to examine the life and work of Texas' foremost novelist and to develop coherent patterns of theme, structure, symbol, imagery, and influence in Larry McMurtry's work. The study focuses on the novelist's relationship to the Southwest, theorizing that his writing exhibits a deep ambivalence toward his home territory. The course of his career demonstrates shifting attitudes that have led him toward, away from, and then back again to his home place and the "cowboy god" that dominates its mythology. The book utilizes original materials from five library special collections, as well as interviews with McMurtry, his family and his friends such as Ken Kesey.
Date: May 1995
Creator: Busby, Mark
System: The UNT Digital Library

A Life in Music from the Soviet Union to Canada: Memoirs of a Madrigal Ensemble Singer

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The musical career of Alexander Tumanov extends from Stalinist and Soviet Russia through contemporary Canada, and as such provides an inspiring portrait of one person’s devotion to his art under trying circumstances. Tumanov was a founding member of Moscow’s Madrigal Ensemble of early music, which introduced Renaissance and Baroque music to the Soviet Union. The Ensemble enjoyed tremendous popularity in the 1960s and 1970s, despite occasional official disapproval by the Soviet bureaucracy. At times the compositions of the group’s founder, Andrei Volkonsky, were banned. Volkonsky eventually emigrated to escape the oppressive conditions, followed soon after, in 1974, by Tumanov, and the Madrigal Ensemble continued in a changed form under new leaders. The story of the author's subsequent life and career in Canada provides a poignant point of contrast with his Soviet period — at the musical, academic, and political levels. This book is a valuable resource for those interested in the history of music and intellectual life in Russia, Ukraine, and the Soviet Union in the twentieth century and is the first published book on the Madrigal Ensemble.
Date: May 2019
Creator: Tumanov, Alexander & Tumanov, Vladimir
System: The UNT Digital Library
A Life in Music from the Soviet Union to Canada [Sound Files] (open access)

A Life in Music from the Soviet Union to Canada [Sound Files]

The musical career of Alexander Tumanov extends from Stalinist and Soviet Russia through contemporary Canada, and as such provides an inspiring portrait of one person’s devotion to his art under trying circumstances. Tumanov was a founding member of Moscow’s Madrigal Ensemble of early music, which introduced Renaissance and Baroque music to the Soviet Union. The Ensemble enjoyed tremendous popularity in the 1960s and 1970s, despite occasional official disapproval by the Soviet bureaucracy. At times the compositions of the group’s founder, Andrei Volkonsky, were banned. Volkonsky eventually emigrated to escape the oppressive conditions, followed soon after, in 1974, by Tumanov, and the Madrigal Ensemble continued in a changed form under new leaders. The story of the author's subsequent life and career in Canada provides a poignant point of contrast with his Soviet period — at the musical, academic, and political levels. These 7 sound files are located in different pages of the book: 1. p. 169: after “an explosion of applause” Title of piece: О страстях (Bicinium De Passione) Performers: Karina Lisitsian (contralto) and Ruzanna Lisitsian (soprano) Composer: Erhard Bodenschatz Year: 1968 LP title (translation from Russian): Thousand Years of Music (Vol. 3): Madrigal – Germany. Renaissance and Early Baroque. LP …
Date: May 2019
Creator: Tumanov, Alexander & Tumanov, Vladimir
System: The UNT Digital Library

Making JFK Matter: Popular Memory and the 35th President

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In Making JFK Matter, Paul Santa Cruz examines how popular memory of John F. Kennedy has been used politically by various interest groups, primarily the city of Dallas, Lyndon Johnson, and Robert Kennedy, as well as how the memory of Kennedy has been portrayed in various museums. Santa Cruz argues that we have memorialized JFK not simply out of love for him or admiration for the ideals he embodied, but because invoking his name carries legitimacy and power. Memory can be employed to accomplish particular ends: for example, the passage of long overdue civil rights legislation, or even successfully running for political office. Santa Cruz demonstrates the presence and use of popular memory in an extensive analysis of what was being said, and by whom, about the late president through White House memoranda and speech material, museum exhibits (such as the Sixth Floor Museum in Dallas and the JFK Presidential Library and Museum in Boston), public correspondence, newspapers and periodicals of the time, memoirs, and archival research. He also explores how JFK has been memorialized in films such as Bobby, JFK, and Thirteen Days. Written in an accessible manner to appeal to both historians and the general public, Making JFK …
Date: May 2015
Creator: Cruz, Paul H. Santa
System: The UNT Digital Library

Minding the Helm: An Unlikely Career in the U.S. Coast Guard

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As a boy growing up in New York City, Kevin P. Gilheany had two dreams: to join the Coast Guard and to play the bagpipes. But by the time he finished high school he was overweight, had a drinking problem, and couldn’t swim. Undeterred by the doubts of the folks at home, he decided to enlist in the Coast Guard anyway. With great determination and some divine intervention, he passed the swim test and graduated from boot camp, thus beginning an eventful and diverse twenty-year career in the 1980s and 1990s Coast Guard. He set a goal for himself to get command of his own patrol boat, and along the way he was involved in capturing drug smugglers, rescuing hundreds of Haitian migrants at sea, recovering Space Shuttle Challenger debris, surviving a “hooligan navy” experience on a Coast Guard workboat, coordinating search and rescue during the famed “Perfect Storm,” and leading armed boardings of ships following the terrorist attacks of 9/11. When he was asked by one of his men, who was dying from brain cancer, to play bagpipes at his retirement ceremony, Kevin started down a new path to have bagpipers officially recognized as part of the Coast Guard. …
Date: May 2019
Creator: Gilheany, Kevin P.
System: The UNT Digital Library

Murder on the White Sands: the Disappearance of Albert and Henry Fountain

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On a cold February evening in 1896, prominent attorney Col. Albert Jennings Fountain and his eight-year-old son Henry rode home across the White Sands of New Mexico. It was a trip the father and son would not complete—they both disappeared in a suspected ambush and murder at the hands of cattle thieves Fountain was prosecuting. The disappearance of Colonel Fountain and his young son resulted in outrage throughout the territory, yet another example of lawlessness that was delaying New Mexico’s progress toward statehood. The sheriff, whose deputies were quickly becoming the prime suspects, did little to solve the mystery. Governor Thornton, eager for action, appointed Pat Garrett as the new sheriff, the man famous for killing Billy the Kid fifteen years earlier. Thornton also called on the Pinkerton National Detective Agency, who assigned top operative John Fraser to assist Garrett with the case. The evidence pointed at three men, former deputies William McNew, James Gililland, and Oliver Lee. These three men, however, were very close with powerful ex-judge, lawyer, and politician Albert B. Fall. It was even said by some that Fall was the mastermind behind the plot to kill Fountain. Forced to wait two years for a change in …
Date: May 15, 2007
Creator: Recko, Corey
System: The UNT Digital Library