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A neglected area of transatlantic history is the relationship between the Reagan administration and the Northern Ireland conflict. This article will seek to address this situation by charting the extent of Ronald Reagan's interest in the issue and the ways and means that other protagonists sought to secure and prevent his involvement. It will examine the president's approach in the context of different views in his administration, the State Department's desire to maintain American neutrality on the issue, and the desire of leading Irish-American politicians for the American government to be far more interventionist. Thus, Reagan's contribution to the Anglo-Irish process encapsulates a variety of interlinking fields of research: the 'Troubles' in Northern Ireland during the 1980s; the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement; and the internationalisation of the conflict before the advent of President Bill Clinton in 1993.

This study takes a step toward reconceptualizing the process of financialization, the reorientation of the US economy toward financial services that scholars view as a product of the 1970s economic shocks and subsequent regulatory liberalization. Instead, I argue that financialization was equally dependent on the gradual development of new financial technologies and business practices within the political and regulatory environment of the early postwar era. I do so by examining a cohort of small U.S. banks, which in the early 1950s began experimenting with a novel form of consumer credit: the charge account credit service. These plans allowed consumers to shop at a variety of local merchants using a single bank charge card. Bankers, though, developed charge account plans not as a conduit for consumer lending but as a business service, which enabled their small-merchant customers to compete with the credit plans offered by expanding department stores. In this way, charge account banking conformed with the 1950s political economy of finance, in which commercial bankers primarily lent to businesses and were still wary of consumer credit. Although they operated differently than the credit cards consumers know today, charge account banking plans were still a necessary first step toward this later financial technology, paving the way for commercial bankers to invest in unsecured card-based credit in the decades that followed.

The First World War (1914–1918) defined the "American century," establishing global political and economic hegemony and shaping national culture and society. However, over a century after the outbreak of the conflict that served to delineate and establish the modern era within the United States, the war appears to be absent from social and collective memory. Indeed, such is the apparent neglect of the war within schemes of remembrance that the campaign for the National World War I Memorial in Washington, DC, which was begun in earnest in 2008, was based upon the sense of amnesia that obscures the role of the United States in the conflict. The reason for this absence may be regarded as due to the all-encompassing nature of the Second World War and the relatively short period in which the nation was involved in the conflict. However, such presumptions have been roundly dismissed by scholars who have demonstrated the highly important role of the United States in ensuring victory for the Entente. This work has revealed the way in which the war altered society and politics after the entry of the nation into the global conflagration. It is during this war that the forces of capitalism and immigration that had built the United States during the nineteenth century were harnessed for the war effort, monitored by the state and controlled by the government for the purposes of national security. The impact of this wartime alteration was so extensive that the process of forgetting the conflict has been highlighted by some studies as a necessary response to the repressive intrusion into the lives of civilians. It is through these accounts that a new account of the First World War and the United States has emerged which reasserts the significance of the conflict for the nation.

This essay examines President Trump's 2016 election campaign commitment to build a border wall with Mexico and the progress he has made in fulfilling this pledge during his first two years in office. Specifically, it addresses: Financial, legal, logistical and political problems that must be overcome to build a wall. Arguments advanced as justification for the project. Reasons why Trump has made the wall not only central to his election campaign but also a recurring, high-profile, policy commitment during his time in office.

Rockstar Games is a video game publisher famous for its immersive and highly detailed action-adventure titles set in America, thanks to its two main franchises, Red Dead Redemption and Grand Theft Auto. This article explores how Rockstar employs the location and game play elements of Grand Theft Auto V (2013), a title that has now generated over $6 billion in worldwide sales, to critique elements of American culture, politics, and lifestyle. Presented by Rockstar co-founder Dan Houser as "the endpoint of the American dream," Grand Theft Auto V provides a crime-laden journey through a simulated Southern California landscape ("San Andreas"). The game is awash with social and political commentary. Of interest here is how, through specific game mechanics such as "satirical play," the title targets the concept of "the American Dream," and exposes themes of excess consumption, fake-ness, and social decay in the Californian and broader American experience. Exposition of these themes is, however, compromised by Rockstar's primary commitment to deliver a mainstream gameplay experience, resulting in mixed messages and moments of ludonarrative dissonance.

In the past year, President Obama has been roundly criticized by the Republican Party over his use of executive actions. While Obama has claimed that he has taken such actions because of Congress' inability to act, his critics argue that he is being excessive and maybe even unconstitutional. In new research, Alexander Bolton and Sharece Thrower find that presidents' use of executive actions became more constrained after World War II – something that they attribute to the allocation of more resources that could be brought to bear on executive oversight.

The next 19 months will see nearly endless speculation over the candidates and the outcome of the 2016 presidential election. But how important is the nomination process? In new research on presidential primaries and caucuses using data from the Cooperative Congressional Election Study, Christopher F. Karpowitz & Jeremy C. Pope find that compared to primaries, caucuses are seen by many voters as being less fair and more likely to advantage special interests, making them less representative, and more likely to attract more partisan voters. This in turn means that caucuses are more likely to select a more extreme nominee.

We are now more than a decade on from the release of the Abu Ghraib abuse photos, which led to one of the largest scandals of the War on Terror. While there have been reports and investigations in the decade since, Peter Finn writes that there are still many unanswered questions. He argues that those higher up in the military chain of command, as well as contractors and their companies, still remain unaccountable. In order to bring closure to the victims and their families, a full and frank investigation into abuse by U.S. forces during the War on Terror is still needed.

The essay draws together various threads of a 2-year multidisciplinary practice-as-research project that combined theatre historiography, performance ethnography and clown practice. Along with theatre historian Professor Tracy C. Davis (Northwestern University) and a creative team including a director, dialect consultant, choreographer, musical director and multimedia designer, I (a trained clown) performed various iterations of Charles Mathews's Trip to America (1824) in Chicago and Cardiff between 2009 and 2011. The essay cites the project's numerous research outputs, including new insights into Mathews's virtuosic technique, but also new theories regarding the genealogy of racialized performance including blackface minstrelsy in the USA and UK, for which Mathews is often cited as a progenitor. The project had transatlantic significance for our understanding of racialized representation, both in performance and reception. However, the essay also tracks and critiques the reception of my own performances in the present day, giving the research an additional layer of relevance and impact. The strong (yet distinct) reactions of audiences in USA and UK provide the jumping off point for a sustained critique of historical reconstructions that seek to bridge or elide historical or cultural gaps. Reflecting on the sometimes fraught relationship between artists and scholars the essay develops a distinction between three different levels at which practice-as-research can contribute to or work alongside the demands of the academy: the pursuit of authenticity and verisimilitude (mimesis); the harnessing of creative strategies in adapting source materials for a modern audience (poeisis); the embrace of the critical and political potentials of performance in relation to controversial issues such as race (kinesis). As such, the essay performs multiple research functions: it disseminates the new scholarly knowledge acquired through the project; and it proposes a rationale for evaluating the significance of embodied ways of knowing and learning that were so valuable in this project.

Traditional accounts of the Allied grand strategic debates during World War II stress the divergence between the American and British approaches to waging war against the Axis. In these interpretations, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and their military chiefs were the primary shapers of grand strategy and policy. However, these studies have focused too much on certain figures and have relatively marginalized others who played crucial roles in shaping these debates. One of those comparatively overlooked figures was U.S. Secretary of War Henry Stimson, who was a vital player on the American side in influencing the politics of U.S. strategy and pushing it toward launching a second front in Western Europe. The Joint Chiefs of Staff were often internally divided over how to win the war and struggled to influence policy accordingly. The lack of focused political coordination between the War Department and the JCS made it difficult to convince Roosevelt to adopt a cross-Channel attack, which opened the door to following the British Mediterranean strategy for defeating Germany, starting with the Anglo-American invasion of North Africa.

This paper documents the persistence of Southern slave owners in political power after the American Civil War. Using data from Texas, we show that former slave owners made up more than half of all state legislators until the late 1890s. Legislators with slave-owning backgrounds were more likely to be Democrats and voted more conservatively even conditional on party membership. A county's propensity to elect former slave owners was positively correlated with cotton production, but negatively with Reconstruction-era progress of blacks. Counties that elected more slave owners also displayed worse educational outcomes for blacks in the early twentieth century.

An analysis of the patterns of Western Christianity across two decades, discussing international politics, society and economic life as well as developments in ecumenism, worship and culture.

As the Great Recession hit, American cities professional organizations and foundations increased efforts to promote civic engagement activities. Through analysis of 2006, 2009, and 2012 survey results, Marcia Godwin finds that cities increased their use of civic engagement tools, especially those involving technology, but reduced strategic planning efforts and the use of citizen surveys. Coming out of the Great Recession, managers in the most affected cities were the most supportive of civic engagement. While managers generally support civic engagement, this support does not widely extend to giving citizens the authority to make decisions.

Description based on: 1861, no. 1 (Jan. 18, 1861); title from caption. ; Some vols. include Orders, Bulletins, Circulars, General court-martial orders, General orders of the Army, New York, etc. ; Mode of access: Internet. ; Issued by the Adjutant General's Off.; by the Military Secretary's Dept.