One of the most accomplished writers and directors of classic Hollywood, Billy Wilder (1906--2002) directed numerous acclaimed films, including Sunset Boulevard (1950), Sabrina (1954), The Seven Year Itch (1955), Witness for the Prosecution (1957), and Some Like It Hot (1959). Featuring Gene D. Phillips's unique, in-depth critical approach, Some Like It Wilder: The Life and Controversial Films of Billy Wilder provides a groundbreaking overview of a filmmaking icon. Wilder began his career as a screenwriter in Berlin but, because of his Jewish heritage, sought refuge in America when Germany came under Nazi control. Making fast connections in Hollywood, Wilder immediately made the jump from screenwriter to director. His classic films Five Graves to Cairo (1943), Double Indemnity (1945), and The Lost Weekend (1945) earned Academy Awards for best picture, director, and screenplay. During the 1960s, Wilder continued to direct and produce controversial comedies, including Kiss Me, Stupid (1964) and The Apartment (1960), which won Oscars for best picture and director. This definitive biography reveals that Wilder was, and remains, one of the most influential directors in filmmaking.

Confederate John Singleton Mosby forged his reputation on the most exhilarating of military activities: the overnight raid. Mosby possessed a genius for guerrilla and psychological warfare, taking control of the dark to make himself the "Gray Ghost" of Union nightmares. Gray Ghost, the first full biography of Confederate raider John Mosby, reveals new information on every aspect of Mosby's life, providing the first analysis of his impact on the Civil War from the Union viewpoint.

Late in Claude Rains's distinguished career, a reverent film journalist wrote that Rains "was as much a cinematic institution as the medium itself." In Claude Rains: An Actor's Voice, noted Hollywood historian David J. Skal draws on more than thirty hours of newly-released Rains interviews to create the first full-length biography of the actor nominated multiple times for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. This portrait of a universally respected Hollywood legend also benefits from the insights of his daughter, Jessica Rains, who provides firsthand accounts of the enigmatic man behind her father's refined screen presence and genteel public persona. With unprecedented access to episodes from Rains's private life, Skal tells the full story of the consummate character actor of his generation.

Striking Back: Combat in Korea, March-April 1951 is the second book in a three-volume series about the Korean War, examining the fighting that occurred during the late winter and early spring of the war's first year. By the beginning of March, UN forces shifted strategic focus from defense to offense. In April, the combination of stabilized fronts and the enemy's failed attacks made conditions ideal for launching combat offensives. The brutal nature and strategic significance of these campaigns is described in the book, which includes analysis of their profound influence on the remainder of the war. William T. Bowers provides detailed battle narratives based on eyewitness accounts recorded by Army historians within days of the operations. Through his use of personal accounts, official records, war diaries, and combat reports, Bowers sheds new light on the conflict in Korea, making this volume a must-read for military historians.

Literature and science are two disciplines are two disciplines often thought to be unrelated, if not actually antagonistic. But Robert J. Scholnick points out that these areas of learning, up through the beginning of the nineteenth century, "were understood as parts of a unitary endeavor. " By mid-century they had diverged, but literature and science have continued to interact, conflict, and illuminate each other. In this innovative work, twelve leaders in this emerging interdisciplinary field explore the long engagement of American writers with science and uncover science's conflicting meanings as a central dimension of the nation's conception of itself. Reaching back to the Puritan poet-minister-physician Edward Taylor, who wrote at the beginning of the scientific revolution, and forward to Thomas Pynchon, novelist of the cybernetic age, this collection of original essays contains essential work on major writers, including Franklin, Jefferson, Poe, Emerson, Thoreau, Twain, Hart Crane, Dos Passos, and Charles Olson. Through its exploration of the ways that American writers have found in science and technology a vital imaginative stimulus, even while resisting their destructive applications, this book points towards a reconciliation and integration within culture. An innovative look at a neglected dimension of our literary tradition, American Literature and Science stands as both a definition of the field and an invitation to others to continue and extend new modes of inquiry.

During World War II, Hollywood studios supported the war effort by making patriotic movies designed to raise the nation's morale. They often portrayed the combatants in very simple terms: Americans and their allies were heroes, and everyone else was a villain. Norway, France, Czechoslovakia, and England were all good because they had been invaded or victimized by Nazi Germany. Poland, however, was represented in a negative light in numerous movies. In Hollywood's War with Poland, 1939-1945, M. B. B. Biskupski draws on a close study of prewar and wartime films such as To Be or Not to Be (1942), In Our Time (1944), and None Shall Escape (1944). He researched memoirs, letters, diaries, and memoranda written by screenwriters, directors, studio heads, and actors to explore the negative portrayal of Poland during World War II. Biskupski also examines the political climate that influenced Hollywood films.

The Civil War scene in Kentucky, site of few full-scale battles, was one of crossroad skirmishes and guerrilla terror, of quick incursions against specific targets and equally quick withdrawals. Yet Kentucky was crucial to the military strategy of the war. For either side, a Kentucky held secure against the adversary would have meant easing of supply problems and an immeasurably stronger base of operations. The state, along with many of its institutions and many of its families, was hopelessly divided against itself. The fiercest partisans of the South tended to be doubtful about the wisdom of secession, and the staunchest Union men questioned the legality of many government measures. What this division meant militarily is made clear as Lowell H. Harrison traces the movement of troops and the outbreaks of violence. What it meant to the social and economic fabric of Kentucky and to its postwar political stance is another theme of this book. And not forgotten is the life of the ordinary citizen in the midst of such dissension and uncertainty.

Vietnam Declassified is a detailed account of the CIA's effort to help South Vietnamese authorities win the loyalty of the Vietnamese peasantry and suppress the Viet Cong. Covering the CIA engagement from 1954 to mid-1972, it provides a thorough analysis of the agency and its partners. Retired CIA operative and intelligence consultant Thomas L. Ahern Jr. is the first to comprehensively document the CIA's role in the rural pacification of South Vietnam, drawing from secret archives to which he had unrestricted access. In addition to a chronology of operations, the book explores the assumptions, political values, and cultural outlooks of not only the CIA and other U.S. government agencies, but also of the peasants, Viet Cong, and Saigon government forces competing for their loyalty. The depth of Ahern's research combined with the timely relevance of his analysis to current events in the Middle East makes this title an important addition to military literature.

Based on interviews conducted by the University of Kentucky's Family Farm Project and supplemented by archival research, photographs, and recipes, Food and Everyday Life on Kentucky Family Farms, 1920--1950 recalls a vanishing way of life in rural Kentucky. Focusing on the family farm in the first half of the twentieth century, John van Willigen and Anne van Willigen illuminate how the revolutionary change from subsistence to market-based agricultural production that was prompted by economic stress and government policy altered not only the production, preparation, and consumption of food in Kentucky, but the social relations within the state's rural communities.

Examining oral history narratives of more than five hundred farmers from all the southern states, Melissa Walker explores how farmers recall their agrarian past and the lessons that they draw from that past. These farmers understood that their way of life was passing--indeed many of them would be pushed off the land forever--and so they told stories to preserve a sense that their way of life mattered. Landowners and sharecroppers; native-born farmers and immigrants, African Americans and whites; and men and women narrate the compelling story of how the rural South was modernized in the twentieth century. Southern Farmers and Their Stories tells the tale of southern rural transformation as it has never been told before--in the words of the farmers themselves.

Frank Mathias was born in Maysville, Kentucky, (pop. 7000) in 1925 and grew up in nearby Carlisle (pop. 1500), where life in his small town was much like that in towns and villages all across America. He came of age in an era of total security; his parents never even had a key to their front door. Daily living was infused with gossip; no one had a secret, and everyone knew everyone else's business. Outdoor life was a vital part of growing up, and teachers and mentors instilled a sense of right and wrong in young people. Raised during the Great Depression, Mathias became a member of a fighting force the likes of which the world had never known, a legion now called "The Greatest Generation." The GI Generation tells Mathias's story of growing up with the sweet whistle of the L&N train and the summer-kitchen smells of hot salt-rising bread and blackberry cobbler, which could instantly halt even the most rousing game of cowboys and Indians. Much of community life focused on the local high school, which, in Mathias's case, was a tiny one with no chemistry courses, no drivers' training, and no guidance counselors. Yet the one hundred students who graduated between 1942 and 1944 became university professors, top executives, military commanders, successful investors, lawyers, and physicians. A vivid portrait of a bucolic pre-war boyhood, The GI Generation takes readers back to an era when boys rustled watermelons under the hot summer sun and young lovers danced to the sounds of farmhouse bands. Whether describing the unfortunate (but delicious) end of his brother's pet chicken, Don, or the ominous clouds of war, Mathias writes with humor, honesty, and compassion.

Europe endured such incessant political discord throughout the twentieth century that some historians refer to the period's conflicts as the Long War. During the Balkan wars of 1912--1913, regional fighting in southeastern Europe ignited conflict across the continent that continued through both world wars and the Cold War. In Consumed by War: European Conflict in the 20th Century, Richard C. Hall illuminates the complex diplomatic and military struggles of a region whose instability, rooted in a nineteenth-century nationalistic fervor, provided a catalyst for the political events that ensued. From the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914 to the incarceration of Radovan Karadzic in 2008, this narrative history appeals to general readers and scholars interested in a fresh interpretation of a complicated and brutal era.

In Entangled by White Supremacy: Reform in World War I-era South Carolina, Janet G. Hudson analyzes World War I-era South Carolina, a state whose white minority maintained political power by rigidly enforcing white supremacy over its African American majority. Considering the aspirations and actions of both black and white reformers, Hudson looks at African American activism, the vigor of white reformers, and the influence of a multifaceted ideology of white supremacy that became a barrier to the region's progress. Detailing African American resistance to white supremacy long before the traditional Civil Rights era, the book illuminates the critical nature of South Carolina to the civil rights movement and to the later demise of Progressivism.

The oral tradition of Kentucky is one of the most rich and interesting in the nation and has attracted a number of outstanding men and women -- scholars and writers, teachers and singers -- who have devoted their energies to Kentucky's folk and their ways. Some have collected examples of the state's unique speech patterns and word usages. Others have recorded local place names and the legends that surround them, or the yarns and tall tales transmitted from one generation to the next. Musicians have sought the authentic mountain folk songs, both old and new, and gifted writers have woven details of their Kentucky upbringing into poems, novels, and stories. The Harvest and the Reapers illuminates the work of those who labor tirelessly to preserve Kentucky's oral history and traditions.

The story of Kentucky's newspapers is the story of our political, economic, and social life. It is the story of issues and answers, the story of life and death. Newspapers, by their very nature, become sources of historical studies. They recount day by day or week by week the happenings, joyous or sorrowful, humorous or sad, enlightening or dull, experienced by those who live in the communities where they are printed or circulated.In 1787, five years before statehood, John Bradford established Kentucky's first newspaper in Lexington. The Kentucky Gazette was first in a long line of newspapers which, over the years, have served the people of the state. The Newspaper Press in Kentucky, by revered Kentucky journalist Herndon J. Evans, illuminates the early days of Kentucky newspapers and their influence.

When Heinz Lüning posed as a Jewish refugee to spy for Hitler's Abwehr espionage agency, he thought he had discovered the perfect solution to his most pressing problem: how to avoid being drafted into Hitler's army. Lüning was unsympathetic to Fascist ideology, but the Nazis' tight control over exit visas gave him no chance to escape Germany. He could enter Hitler's army either as a soldier. .. or a spy. In 1941, he entered the Abwehr academy for spy training and was given the code name "Lumann." Soon after, Lüning began the service in Cuba that led to his ultimate fate of being the only German spy executed in Latin America during World War II. Lüning was not the only spy operating in Cuba at the time. Various Allied spies labored in Havana; the FBI controlled eighteen Special Intelligence Service operatives, and the British counterintelligence section subchief Graham Greene supervised Secret Intelligence Service agents; and Ernest Hemingway's private agents supplied inflated and inaccurate information about submarines and spies to the U.S. ambassador, Spruille Braden. Lüning stumbled into this milieu of heightened suspicion and intrigue. Poorly trained and awkward at his work, he gathered little information worth reporting, was unable to build a working radio and improperly mixed the formulas for his secret inks. Lüning eventually was discovered by British postal censors and unwittingly provided the inspiration for Graham Greene's Our Man in Havana. In chronicling Lüning's unlikely trajectory from a troubled life in Germany to a Caribbean firing squad, Thomas D. Schoonover makes brilliant use of untapped documentary sources to reveal the workings of the famed Abwehr and the technical and social aspects of Lüning's spycraft. Using archival sources from three continents, Schoonover offers a narrative rich in atmospheric details to reveal the political upheavals of the time, not only tracking Lüning's activities but also explaining the broader trends in the region and in local counterespionage. Schoonover argues that ambitious Cuban and U.S. officials turned Lüning's capture into a grand victory. For at least five months after Lüning's arrest, U.S. and Cuban leaders -- J. Edgar Hoover, Fulgencio Batista, Nelson Rockefeller, General Manuel Benítez, Ambassador Spruille Braden, and others -- treated Lüning as a dangerous, key figure for a Nazi espionage network in the Gulf-Caribbean. They reworked his image from low-level bumbler to master spy, using his capture for their own political gain. In the sixty years since Lüning's execution, very little has been written about Nazi espionage in Latin America, partly due to the reticence of the U.S. government. Revealing these new historical sources for the first time, Schoonover tells a gripping story of Lüning's life and capture, suggesting that Lüning was everyone's man in Havana but his own.