News
Review of Michael Snyder's Our Osage Hills
Article on Ethel Waxham Love
Rebbeca Hein, assistant editor of WyoHistory.org, has published an article on the life of Ethel Waxham Love, citing Barabra Love's Life on Muskrat Creek. You can find the complete write up here: https://www.wyohistory.org/encyclopedia/sticking-power-ethel-waxham-love.
2019 Willa Literary Awards
We would like to offer congragulations to the Love family for their book placing as a finalist in the Scholarly Nonfiction category of 2019's Willa Literary Awards. The book, Life on Muskrat Creek, written by Ethel Waxham and J. David Love, and edited by Frances Love Froidevaux and Barabra Love, tells the fascinating story of a family's day-to-day life on an isolated ranch in early twentieth-century Wyoming. You may find out more information here: https://lupress.cas.lehigh.edu/content/life-muskrat-creek.
Annoucing New Book Series Critical Conversations in Horror Studies
Lehigh University Press is happy to annouce the launch of a new book series entitled Critical Conversations in Horror Studies. Lehigh University's own Dawn Keetly, Professor of English, will take charge as series editor. Please check out the book description below for more information:
If you are interested in submitting a manuscript for this series, please send a proposal, a vita, and a sample chapter to Dawn Keetley at dek7@lehigh.edu and the Director of Lehigh University Press, Kate Crassons, at inlup@lehigh.edu. Feel free to email Dawn Keetley with any inquiries.
For more information, click here.
Lehigh University Press Announces Three New Board Members
Lehigh University Press is proud to welcome three new board members to its family: Jessecae Marsh, Paul Brockman, and George DuPaul.
An associate professor of psychology, Dr. Marsh serves as the Director of the Health, Medicine, and Society Program. She is a trained cognitive psychology, with interests in health reasoning and decision making and higher order cognition. Her research investigates how people’s beliefs about causal relationships influence their thinking, especially in regard to how they think about categories in the world. She recently co-edited a special section for the journal Clinical Psychological Science on how multidisciplinary research approaches can be used to study clinical decision-making.
A professor of finance, Dr. Brockman serves also as Senior Associate Dean for Faculty and Research and holds the Joseph R. Perella and Amy M. Perella Chair. His research interests include corporate finance, capital markets, market microstructure, derivative securities, and international finance, with a focus on corporate decision making.
A professor of School Psychology in the Department of Education and Human Services, Dr. DuPaul's primary research interests are school-based assessment and intervention for children, adolescents, and young adults with attention-deficit/hyperactivit
We are very happy to have Dr. Marsh, Dr. Brockman, and Dr. DuPaul on board. Their expertise will no doubt be indispensable.
Review of Law and Medicine in Revolutionary America: Dissecting the "Rush v. Cobbett" Trial, 1799
Marcia D. Nichols of the University of Minnesota Rochester has written a fantastic review of Linda Myrsiades' book Law and Medicine in Revolutionary America. This review was published in vol. 139, no. 2 of the Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, and can also be found below:
In 1797, Benjamin Rush sued William Cobbett for libel. Rush’s decision to address in the courtroom the biting criticism “Porcupine” had leveled at “Sangrado” during the 1797 yellow fever epidemic was a highly risky strategy that ultimately proved a pyrrhic victory for the doctor. In 1798, the Alien and Sedition Acts made it possible for Rush’s Republican legal team to turn the tables on the Federalists by using their law to punish one of their own journalists. Linda Myrsiades “anatomizes” the Rush-Cobbett trial of 1799 as a case study that captures the interrelationship among early party politics, the medical marketplace, debates over freedom of the press, and an emerging uniquely American jurisprudence (3). By contextualizing a rare, published trial transcript, Myrsiades offers a highly compelling reading of Rush v. Cobbett as a “crucible for testing critical issues of the times” that explores the mutually constituting narratives of medicine and politics, fever and religion, individual and nation (2).
Before the mid-nineteenth century, it was nearly impossible to bring suit against a medical practitioner for malpractice because malpractice law required plaintiffs to prove not only that the physician had been neglectful but also that the patient had not acted irresponsibly. Therefore, most claims of malpractice were tried in the press, where unhappy patients or critical colleagues would air their grievances; often, medical practitioners would answer in kind. Myrsiades contextualizes Cobbett’s attacks on Rush within this tradition as well as within the rancorous doctors’ wars of the yellow fever epidemics, in which Rush was a lead participant. By establishing that Rush was no stranger to animadversion in print, Myrsiades highlights how extraordinary it was for Rush to sue Cobbett for slander.
Myrsiades examines Cobbett and the state of the scurrilous press in light of Federalist attempts to limit press freedom. “Porcupine” comes alive as Myrsiades recounts his acid pen, his frequent brushes with the law, and his gloating defi ance of Chief Justice John Mitchel McKean, who, unfortunately for Cobbett, became governor of Pennsylvania before Rush’s libel suit came to trial. The new chief justice, Edward Shippen, would prove equally hostile to Cobbett, managing the trial and instructing the jury in highly prejudicial ways.
Myrsiades traces the brilliant, if disjointed, legal strategy of Rush’s team, who linked the trial’s outcome to the fate of the nation. Employing the secular jeremiad to great effect, they apparently convinced a jury that fi nding Cobbett guilty was necessary to preserve America’s freedom. Cobbett’s team, in contrast, was lukewarm in its defense, failing to utilize the truth defense, as the absent Cobbett wanted. With the deck stacked against the defendant, “the jury took only two hours to convict . . . and assign an unprecedented fi ne of $5,000,” causing Cobbett to flee the country (190).
Law and Medicine in Revolutionary America offers a brilliant reading of a crucial, if largely overlooked, event in early American law and medicine. Myrsiades’s deft handling of sources and her trenchant analysis of the 1799 Rush-Cobbett trial offer new insight into freedom of the press, the medical marketplace, the legal system, and the politics of the early republic.
May 2015 Issue of Choice
Craig (Slippery Rock Univ.) provides an in-depth analysis of the rise and fall of the 1920s Ku Klux Klan in western Pennsylvania. Supported by an exhaustive list of sources, the author persuasively shows that the Klan was extremely active in the area. Relying heavily on newspaper accounts and trial records, he explains that the Klan’s early emphasis on almost theatrical gestures (going masked to churches or civic meetings to present checks, burning crosses on hills, holding large parades) allowed it to rapidly attract members, especially a surprisingly high percentage of young men. Similarly, Craig shows how violent confrontations with Klan opponents (sometimes resulting in the deaths of innocent bystanders) and the resulting criminal trials of Klan members (combined with the scandals plaguing the organization’s national leaders) explain the Klan’s rapid decline in the region. He also provides a glimpse of the women of the Ku Klux Klan and their agreements and conflicts with their male counterparts. Although it is easy to get lost in the barrage of details (a map would greatly help), anyone studying the 1920s Klan or Pennsylvania history will find the work indispensable. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above.
--K. L. Gorman, Minnesota State University--Mankato