Yankee Go Home

Yankee Go Home? traces the winding course of this feeling over two centuries - from the United Empire Loyalists who fled north to escape unbridled republicanism, through the early twentieth century when the barons of business were determined to keep out U.S. competition, to the post-war period when Canadian nationalists took up the cry. Granatstein maintains that what began as a justifiable fear of invasion eventually became a tool of the economic and political elites bent on preserving their power. At first, anti-Americanism was largely the Tory way of keeping pro-British attitudes uppermost in the minds of Canadians. Later, with the right wing embracing the free-trade deal, it became the most important weapon of the nationalist left. Today, anti-Americanism is weaker than ever before. And what of the future?

In the aftermath of the 1910 Mexican Revolution, Mexican and U.S. political leaders, business executives, and ordinary citizens shaped modern Mexico by making industrial capitalism the key to upward mobility into the middle class, material prosperity, and

Yankee Come Home explores one family's history in Cuba, and through it, the intense, complex, smoldering relationship between the island nation and its leviathan neighbor. In Cuba's most entrancing, storied landscape, William Craig is searching for a history that his family has lost-and now needs to recover. He's looking for the truth about his mysterious great-grandfather, Thomas O'Brien, a self-proclaimed hero of the "splendid little war" who left a legacy of glorious, painful lies. Living a dream that haunts American hearts-the dream of escaping the past, of becoming who we say we are-"Papa" died leaving his own children wondering who he'd really been. Along the way, Craig searches for the place where Gilded Age America abandoned republican ideals in favor of imperial ambition-and where his own generation of Americans now preside over arbitrary imprisonment and systematized torture. "I needed to see Guantánamo the way some Americans needed to drive through the night to kneel at JFK's coffin, and others are drawn to Ground Zero," he writes. "Sometimes, we don't know what we've lost until we trace the scars." Traveling with Craig, readers will join in present-day adventures: spirit-possession rituals, black market odysseys, roots-music epiphanies, and discovering the continuing impact of the war in 1898 on both Cuba and America. The story of the United States in Cuba is fascinating, but none too flattering. Like the reality of "Papa" O'Brien's identity, it reflects more hubris than heroism, more avarice than sacrifice. In the end, however, Craig's journey in Yankee Come Home is a transformation from disillusionment to redemption.

We can do little to escape the experience of the United States of America through many media: TV, pop music, youth culture, Hollywood, fast food. How do these traces and images affect us? Do we internalize them, want to be American? Do we (can we?) resist them? Is our desire for them a symptom of European pop culture's crisis? From black face minstrelsy, rap music and fiction to McDonald's, rock festivals and Star Trek, the cultural conception of America is critically unpacked by contributors from Europe, Israel and the USA. McKay rounds off the picture by offering a comprehensive introduction that explains theoretical approaches to Americanization from the thesis of Yankee cultural imperialism to America as site of liberation or fantasy.

Throughout the 2008 season, each game played at the world’s most beloved stadium brought “The House That Ruth Built” closer to shutting its gates forever. Players envisioned running off the field one last time. Vendors anticipated selling their last bags of peanuts. Fans readied themselves to raise their voices in one final cheer. In Remembering Yankee Stadium, Harvey Frommer—one of the country’s leading baseball authorities—takes us on a journey through the stadium’s storied 85-year old history, from 1927’s unstoppable Murderers’ Row, to Joe DiMaggio’s unfathomable hitting streak, to Maris and Mantle’s thrilling race for the home-run record, to the hirings—and the firings—of Billy Martin, to Derek Jeter’s rise to greatness. The moments and the magic that filled this great stadium are brought alive again through dozens of interviews, a gripping narrative, and a priceless collection of photographs and memorabilia. As the new stadium steps into the forefront, the old ballpark across the street recedes into memory, taking with it the glory and grandeur, the history and heroics, the magic and the mystique of its nearly nine decade-long life. This book captures that time and is at once an album, a keepsake, and a record of its fabulous run.

The name of Union general William T. Sherman is still reviled in Atlanta, 150 years after his soldiers devastated this important Georgia city. Thirty-seven days of artillery bombardment, July-August 1864, wrecked countless downtown buildings and killed perhaps a score of civilians. Longtime Atlantan Stephen Davis describes Sherman's shelling in detail unmatched in the Civil War literature. After capturing Atlanta, Federal troops occupied the city for two and a half months during September-November, further tearing down more buildings to make their huts and fortifications. Before leading his army across Georgia to the sea, Sherman ordered the leveling of much of downtown. His soldiers took up torches on their own and set fires throughout town. The "Burning of Atlanta" is thus only part of the city's wartime travail. Davis tells the story with a thoroughness and understanding that makes What the Yankees Did to Us the definitive work on the subject.

“Allen Barra brings a legendary figure from the true golden age of baseball to life.”—Bob Costas Yogi Berra is one of the most popular former athletes in American history, and the most quoted American since Abraham Lincoln. Part clown, part feisty competitor, Berra is also the winningest player (fourteen pennants, ten World Series, 3 MVPs) in baseball history. In this revelatory biography, Allen Barra presents Yogi’s remarkable life as never seen before with nearly one hundred photos and countless “Yogi-isms,” and offers hilarious insights into many of baseball’s greatest moments. From calling Don Larsen’s perfect game, to managing the 1973 “You Gotta Believe” New York Mets, Yogi’s life and career are a virtual cutaway view of our national pastime in the twentieth century.