U. of Massachusetts Press

Not yet a placeless land; tracking an evolving American geography.

Zelinsky (geography, Penn State U.) offers a systematic inquiry into the widespread belief that mass-media, centralized governance, and market-capitalism have flattened and homogenized the cultural landscape of the United States. The title of the book anticipates his conclusions, and so much of the book addresses the specific forces that have shaped American cultural geography. He considers cultural drift and local invention, interactions with the physical environment, group affiliations, the market and pursuit of pleasure, arbitrary governmental and corporate geographic decisions, as well as conscious place-making. He catalogs several relatively autonomous cultural regions, according to already existing and emergent schema. The index seems to be incomplete and contains incorrect entries. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

The people of the standing stone; the Oneida nation from the revolution through the era of removal.

Experiencing the triple devastation of war, dispossession, and division across a wide geographic area in the eight decades that began with the American Revolution, the "Oneidas of the post-Revolution generation were reluctant pioneers, undertaking more of the adaptations to colonized life than any other generation," according to Tiro (Xavier U.), who examines Oneida adaptations and efforts to maintain continuity across these 80 years as they interacted with Euro-American settlers and the agents of state and national governments. His main aim is to look at how the Oneidas negotiated issues of religion, land use, relocation, political loyalty, rights, and governance, among others, in order to provide some understanding of the origins and rights they continue to assert, including the contemporary efforts to reclaim land in the state of New York. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

When Roosevelt planned to govern France.

Although President Franklin D. Roosevelt considered plans for an American-run allied occupation of liberated France after WWII, the American Military Government for Occupied Territories (AMGOT) in France was never enacted. However, French historians, journalists, and the French public still believe that allied military occupation of their country would surely have happened without the actions of General Charles de Gaulle. This book concludes that AMGOT in France was mainly a Gaullist myth, used by the Gaullist movement to rally French opinion. The book draws on telegrams, memos, and letters by members of the Gaullist movement from the French National Archives, and on a US State Department collection of documents called Foreign Relations of the United States: Diplomatic Papers. Robertson is retired from Smith College. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)