I am finishing up my research paper for my Civil War Command and Leadership class that I spoke of a few months ago. Next week I start a full load of 12 credit hours which will place me at 27 credit hours with one class and my thesis remaining (9 credit hours). It’s a good thing we have David here now as well, seeing that I will be very busy.
Here are the classes I have coming up:
HIST557 History and Popular Culture – A class that I am interested in seeing the curriculum as there were no books to purchase all materials will be downloaded!
HIST520 Graduate Seminar in U.S. History – Looking forward to this challenging class. The books that I have had to purchase so far: The End of Reform: New Deal Liberalism in Recession and War by Alan Brinkley; Impending Crisis, 1848-1861 by David M. Potter; Search for Order, 1877-1920 by Robert H. Wiebe; and What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848 by Daniel Walker Howe. I have already read Daniel Walker Howe’s book which is fantastic. I have also started reading New Deal Liberalism in Recession and War which will challenge me and this good, so I see this course as a great challenge and one I welcome.
HIST555 The United States in the 20th Century – For this class I have purchased Pivotal Decades by Jonh J. Cooper; and Liberalism and Its Challengers: From FDR to Bush by Alonzo L. Hamby. Another great class that I anticipate will be be informative.
Publishers have also sent me some interesting titles:
”Deliver Us from This Cruel War”: The Civil War Letters of Lieutenant Joseph J. Hoyle, 55th North Carolina Infantry by Joseph J. Hoyle, Jeffrey M. Girvan (Editor). McFarland, 2010. I liked Mr. Girvin’s chapter “Studies of the Common Soldier in the Civil War” which is a historiography on the recent studies of Civil War soldiers.
Beyond the March of Death: Memoir of a Soldier’s Journey from Bataan to Nagasaki Myrrl W. McBride, Sr. Foreword by Myrrl W. McBride, Jr., and Gerald F. McBride. McFarland, 2010. I read this book in a few hours on Sunday afternoon in an attempt to get my mind off health care and I am happy to report Myrrl W. McBride’s riveting, insightful and at time colorful narrative of his time as a POW from his experiences during the tortuous Bataan Death March to his time in Japan as essentially a worker slave. A great read!
The Last Leaf: Voices of the History’s Last-Known Survivors by Stuart Lutz. Prometheus Books, 2010.
And finally, The Long Shadow of the Civil War: Southern Dissent and Its Legacies by Victoria E. Bynum. UNC Press, 2010. This looks like an interesting accomplishment by Mrs. Bynum that I look forward to reading. From the Publisher: “Victoria Bynum relates uncommon narratives about common Southern folks who fought not with the Confederacy, but against it. Focusing on regions in three Southern states–North Carolina, Mississippi, and Texas–Bynum introduces Unionist supporters, guerrilla soldiers, defiant women, socialists, populists, free blacks, and large interracial kin groups that belie stereotypes of the South and of Southerners as uniformly supportive of the Confederate cause.”
Chris,
I’m currently enrolled in HIST 520 with Dr. Bowles. I am enjoying that class tremendously. We are currently reading Howe’s book, and yes, it is excellent. Dr. Bowles is very good too. It’s refreshing to have a professor that involves himself in teh discussion boards, and is very well read (the guy seems to have a recommendation of a book he’s read for almost every single topic in American history!). I believe he teaches the 20th century course as well. So if you have him in double, then you’re gonna have a fun semester…I know I’m having one.
Alex, great glad to hear it! I have Dr. Bowles for several classes. My experience at APU has been great and I know that I am getting as much out of it as I would at any other University.
Chris